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enEucalyptus and cloud news roundup Oct. 21, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/10/21/eucalyptus-and-cloud-news-roundup-oct-21-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>One of the big themes in cloud computing over the past few years has been the search for "enterprise-grade" solutions, distinguished by their levels of data control, security and performance. Businesses, especially startups, have certainly found uses for public clouds such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, but for many organizations, some data is never going to leave the premises.</p>
<p>Enter the hybrid cloud. Ideally, there would be a seamless architecture spanning data centers, colo sites and public clouds via API compatibility. In this week's news roundup, we'll look at how vendors are striving toward that goal through mergers and acquisitions as well as the use of technologies that enable greater agility for their customers.</p>
<p><strong>The Value of Software M&amp;A Activity is Going Up</strong></p>
<p>September was huge for mergers and acquisitions in software. Six of the industry's highest value moves so far this year happened last month, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>HP picking up Eucalyptus as part of its hybrid cloud strategy</li>
<li>EMC acquiring TwinStrata for offsite backup and recovery.</li>
<li>Microsoft buying InMage with an eye toward business continuity.</li>
</ul>
<p>Nathan Eddy has a full rundown of <a href="http://www.eweek.com/small-business/software-industry-sees-rise-in-ma-value.html">recent M&amp;A activity</a> for eWeek. Hybrid cloud, data storage, disaster recovery and the Internet of Things have been a few of the threads uniting these transactions, the combined value of which doubled from the previous quarter to nearly $39 billion.</p>
<p><strong>Vendors Updating Product Lines for Enterprise Usage</strong></p>
<p>The recent <a href="http://fortune.com/2014/10/14/ibm-sap-enterprise-cloud-partnership/">partnership between SAP and IBM</a>, which enables SAP's HANA big data solution to run atop IBM's infrastructure, was a good indication of how much progress hybrid cloud has made among businesses. Writing for IT Business Edge, Arthur Cole went further and looked at what this collaboration says about legacy vendors' <a href="http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/infrastructure/in-search-of-a-cloud-worthy-of-the-enterprise.html">strategies for getting customers to the cloud</a>.</p>
<p>The Cisco-Metacloud and HP-Eucalyptus deals highlight how much vendors are willing to invest in flexible, modern cloud solutions as the $3 trillion IT market changes so quickly. In the notes about its October 2014 earnings miss, however, IBM specifically mentioned this rapid evolution in business IT. What are companies doing to adjust their sails for this new environment?</p>
<p>Cole mentioned data virtualization as a replacement for resource virtualization. This technique theoretically helps solve one of the biggest challenges with the cloud: moving data between different types of infrastructure. Still, for many enterprises, going all in on the cloud isn't feasible now and possibly not for a while.</p>
<p>"Cloud supporters will no doubt claim that increased deployment of enterprise-class services will inevitably lead to an all-cloud data environment for the IT industry at large, but it is more likely that we will see an increase in hybrid deployments first," wrote Cole. "Organizations still value their data above all else, so it is only natural that they would want to maintain an active role in the care and feeding of the underlying infrastructure."</p>
<p><strong>Cloud Giants Boost Hybrid Cloud Offerings</strong></p>
<p>Everyone wants a slice of the hybrid cloud pie, from IT vendors to cloud service providers. Microsoft, Rackspace and Cisco have all recently made moves in the hybrid cloud space, underscoring how important the technology has become to buyers and sellers alike.</p>
<p>In its race against AWS and Google, Microsoft unveiled an Azure <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2836373/cloud-computing/microsoft-goes-all-in-on-hybrid-cloud-with-azure-in-a-box.html">cloud-in-a-box</a> this week, which is essentially an on-premises appliance that syncs with the Azure public cloud. On the same day, Rackspace announced updates to RackConnect, a hybrid cloud offering that leverages <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/blog/morning-edition/2014/10/rackspace-touts-security-upgrades-for-its-hybrid.html">dedicated servers</a> within public cloud environments.</p>
<p>What's behind this activity? Cisco's Rob Lloyd, in an article for CRN, pointed to the fact that <a href="http://www.crn.com.au/Feature/396409,hybrid-cloud-is-the-fastest-growing-area-cisco.aspx">hybrid cloud services are growing much faster</a> than pure public ones (40 percent versus 17 percent each year).</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 21 Oct 2014 16:00:00 +0000cdyess3174 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/10/21/eucalyptus-and-cloud-news-roundup-oct-21-2014#commentsOpenStack's Importance to Service Providers and Enterpriseshttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/10/17/openstacks-importance-service-providers-and-enterprises
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>What has driven OpenStack's success? The project has been a defining force in cloud computing since Rackspace and NASA founded it in 2010. This year in particular it has gained substantial traction, with Eucalyptus expressing its support a few months ago and then Hewlett-Packard - now the largest single contributor to OpenStack - acquiring Eucalyptus shortly thereafter.</p>
<p>It's apparent that more companies are betting on OpenStack as a path toward modern private and hybrid cloud services, more specifically solutions that benefit enterprises that seek control over their data and infrastructure. Nebula's Chris Kemp explained it well in an article for VentureBeat, when he described HP's move as "bold" and stressed the importance of having an alternative to pure public cloud.</p>
<p>"By acquiring a private-cloud company, HP is the first legacy hardware vendor to step off the fence and put a stake in the ground with a <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/23/in-the-race-for-the-enterprise-cloud-hp-made-a-bold-move/">firm cloud strategy</a>, giving the company a strong first-mover advantage," explained Kemp. "This acquisition is also a ringing endorsement that OpenStack is the foundation for the operating system of cloud computers."</p>
<p><strong>Questions Remain about Leadership and the OpenStack Core</strong></p>
<p>Taking a step back - and returning to our original question - it's important to keep in mind that OpenStack has benefited from a large and active community that has pushed for standards from the very beginning. In this sense, OpenStack is more organized than many open source initiatives, although it still faces significant challenges in reigning in its committee-led design. Gartner's Lydia Leong noted that OpenStack needed a solid, extensible core to drive up enterprise adoption, but that there was plenty of work left to do in getting to that point.</p>
<p>A specific area for improvement would be the DefCore approval process. In a blog post for Red Hat, <a href="http://www.buildyourbestcloud.com/699/why-openstack-foundation-needs-define-base-requirements-sooner-rather-later">Joel Keller laid out some potential changes</a> and outlined what's at stake in being able to approve and integrate code that meets project requirements. Moreover, OpenStack has sometimes been criticized for its leadership or perceived lack thereof. Increased support from major vendors could go a long way in giving companies a flavor of OpenStack that meets their requirements.</p>
<p>The recently released Juno update demonstrates how much progress OpenStack has made in a few years. Many service providers are looking for ways to shift network functions from proprietary hardware to commodity servers, via a process known as network functions virtualization. OpenStack Juno includes such NFV support, as well as big data processing and federated cloud authentication. These features may help OpenStack make further inroads in verticals such as telecommunications and scientific research, in which multiple, large-scale clouds are commonplace.</p>
<p>These regular updates, guided by a coherent overall strategy, are important to OpenStack's prospects. But so are commercial solutions that package it in a sensible way and remove the implementation challenges and steep learning curve commonly associated with the project. With public cloud continuing to remake IT, devising a coherent OpenStack strategy will be increasingly critical for vendors in the coming years.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 17:00:00 +0000cdyess3172 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/10/17/openstacks-importance-service-providers-and-enterprises#commentsEucalyptus and Cloud News Roundup Oct. 17, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/10/17/eucalyptus-and-cloud-news-roundup-oct-17-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>After an eventful September in Eucalyptus and cloud news, highlighted by HP's acquisition of Eucalyptus and personnel moves at a variety of major cloud players, October has so far been a little quieter. However, there's still plenty to cover in open source software, hybrid cloud and the relationship between business innovation and IT infrastructure management. Here are a few stories that have made headlines recently:</p>
<p><strong>Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos on Open Source Business Models</strong></p>
<p>Open source movements from Linux to OpenStack have immeasurably improved the quality of consumer and enterprise software over the last 25 years. However, some projects have historically struggled to generate consistent revenue, move in a coherent direction and/or attract interest from businesses. Part of the issue is that so much open source software is freely available.</p>
<p>In a post for <a href="http://opensource.com/">opensource.com</a>, excerpted from his recent talk "<a href="https://opensource.com/business/14/9/open-source-business-models-part-2">Open Source Business Models</a>," Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos went in depth about what he saw as the two dominant approaches to turning open source into a business:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The foundation model, in which a nonprofit entity manages the project and various vendors can use parts of it for their own products. Linux is probably the best example.</p></li>
<li><p>The organization model, whereby the project and the company are basically one and the same. Eucalyptus, Docker and MySQL are just a few examples.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Marten offered some advice on turning an open source initiative into a viable business. It's important to figure out early on why the code is being produced, who it will serve and and how it will be governed and directed.</p>
<p><strong>Different types of Innovation Across Public and Private Clouds</strong></p>
<p>One of the most appealing features of public cloud is essentially not having to worry about infrastructure management. Clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services have removed some of the pressure on businesses to continually upgrade their IT assets, but at what cost?</p>
<p>Public cloud has a few well-known drawbacks, such as potentially high costs over the long term and low control over data. Another subtler issue may be the inability to innovate at certain levels of the stack.</p>
<p>Writing for ReadWrite, MongoDB vice president Matt Asay looked at how cloud service providers essentially tell their customers to "do as I say, not as I do." Giants like Google and Amazon have spent years building custom infrastructure so that they can they rent it to customers. Users get convenient services and can focus on business innovation, but they can't really control their IT destiny.</p>
<p>"That may be an acceptable trade-off for many - possibly even most - companies [that] need to embrace the cloud to cut costs, <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/10/14/amazon-public-cloud-innovation-chris-schlaeger">simplify the management of their IT infrastructure</a> or extend their online reach," wrote Asay. "But it's also worth noting that the most innovative companies today shun the public cloud, and instead run on their own data centers and heavily modify the open source software they use."</p>
<p><strong>SAP, IBM and the Hybrid Cloud in the Mainstream</strong></p>
<p>It's obvious that hybrid cloud is now a core concern for most large vendors and their customers. A recent deal between SAP and IBM, though, really sends home how important hybrid cloud has become as enterprises look to balance scalability with control.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal's Steve Rosenbush reported that SAP would be using IBM's cloud to deliver some of its software. The move is notable because SAP previously had an arrangement with AWS to do the same, but shifted away from it in order to appeal to firms that are wary of IT outsourcing.</p>
<p>"What we are signaling with this agreement is that you can <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/10/15/the-morning-download-ibm-sap-pact-reflects-rise-of-hybrid-cloud/">run full-fledged core enterprise applications in the cloud</a>," stated IBM's Erich Clementi, according to Rosenbush</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 16:00:00 +0000cdyess3173 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/10/17/eucalyptus-and-cloud-news-roundup-oct-17-2014#commentsEucalyptus and Cloud News Roundup Oct. 6, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/10/06/eucalyptus-and-cloud-news-roundup-oct-6-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>In the this week's Eucalyptus and cloud news roundup, we'll touch upon a few recent stories, including Google's move to lower its compute prices (again), the partnership between AT&amp;T and Amazon Web Services and what the cloud means for the gender gap in technology. If there's a thread running through much of the recent news in cloud computing, it's the realization by vendors that having a hybrid cloud strategy is now table stakes in an increasingly competitive landscape. From the Eucalyptus acquisition by Hewlett-Packard to Cisco's expanding partnerships, cloud providers are looking beyond standalone public and private cloud solutions.</p>
<p><strong>Cloud Pricing War Starts Up Again</strong></p>
<p>Earlier this year, Google introduced broad price reductions for Google Cloud Platform. Amazon and Microsoft responded with similar cuts to their on-demand resources. At the time, it was easy to get caught up in this back and forth and overlook how price is just one criterion for evaluating a cloud solution (Hassan Hosseini had a good rundown of <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/aws-responds-price-cuts-google-vs-aws-pricing-round-2">differences in memory, storage media etc.</a>).</p>
<p>The price war is starting up again. <a href="http://www.techrepublic.com/article/google-cuts-cloud-computing-prices-gives-away-unlimited-storage-to-students/">Google lowered Google Compute Engine rates</a> by 10 percent last week. It also confirmed changes to Google Drive for students. It will be interesting to see if Amazon and Microsoft, among the leading infrastructure-as-a-service providers, will follow suit or try to differentiate their services in other ways.</p>
<p><strong>The Effect of Increased Competition on Cloud Incumbents</strong></p>
<p>Forbes contributor Peter Cohan put the cuts in context by looking at <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2014/10/01/3-front-attack-on-microsofts-cloud/">three challenges facing Microsoft Azure</a>. For example, Amazon has more market share and as such additional leeway to implement price cuts.</p>
<p>More companies, from startups to legacy vendors, are also updating and diversifying their cloud strategies, theoretically introducing more competition into the market. There are still clear leaders in public cloud, but the number of challengers is rising.</p>
<p><strong>Cisco Tries to Fill Hybrid Cloud Void Left by Amazon</strong></p>
<p>AWS has been synonymous with public cloud for years, due to its size (much more capacity than everyone else combined) and longevity (established all the way back in 2006). Despite its dominance, there have been many opportunities for others to capitalize on its lesser presence in hybrid cloud.</p>
<p>Companies like Eucalyptus have crafted private clouds with AWS API compatibility. Now Cisco is looking to move into hybrid cloud through its Intercloud initiative. VentureBeat's Jordan Novet recently took a look at the more than 30 companies that have signed on to the project. Intercloud appears targeted at companies that still run significant applications in their own data centers. Its emergence comes at a time when everyone from VMware to HP is looking at ways to fulfill rising demand for hybrid cloud services.</p>
<p>"Amazon Web Services, the market-leading public cloud, <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/29/cisco-ropes-in-more-than-30-partners-to-inflate-its-hybrid-cloud-service/">has not been extremely active</a> when it comes to pushing hybrid clouds," wrote Novet. "But if the army Cisco is assembling for its Intercloud does make serious advancements, expect Amazon's cloud executives to start talking about the subject a lot more."</p>
<p>Intel et al Look to Close Gender Gap as Demand for Cloud Skills Surges
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, cloud-related technologies could create more than <a href="http://fortune.com/2014/10/01/can-cloud-computing-help-cure-the-high-tech-gender-gap/">1 million jobs by 2020</a>. However, the university system may produce enough qualified applicants to fill less than one-third of the eventual openings.</p>
<p>Corporations like Intel have looked to solve this problem by incentivizing more women to consider IT jobs. Although women spend more time on the Internet than men, they only hold one-quarter of all IT positions. At the first IT Cloud Computing Conference in late October, Intel will pay half the registration fees for female attendees.</p>
<p><strong>AT&amp;T, Amazon Partner Up on NetBondSM</strong></p>
<p>Telcos have often regarded cloud providers as competition. But the two sides can also work together.</p>
<p>AT&amp;T's NetBondSM is a network-enabled cloud solution. Thanks to a recent <a href="http://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/2014/oct/06/amazon-and-t-buddy-netbond-vpn-service/">partnership between AT&amp;T and Amazon</a>, its users can now utilize VPN to access AWS directly without having to go through the Internet.</p>
<p>Writing for Cloud Tech, James Bourne noted that AT&amp;T's move is similar to other recent cloud pushes from service providers like CenturyLink and Ericsson. Telcos are looking to offer the on-demand services that users have come to expect from public cloud.</p>
</div></div></div>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 16:32:00 +0000cdyess3171 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/10/06/eucalyptus-and-cloud-news-roundup-oct-6-2014#commentsCloud News Recap: August 26, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/26/cloud-news-recap-august-26-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Last week brought more news about what Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos has called a company "turnaround" owing to renewed focus on Amazon Web Services compatibility in particular and easy-to-use private cloud computing in general.</p>
<p>At a time when the OpenStack community still faces challenges with design and usability, Eucalyptus is in great position to meet the needs of organizations seeking a private cloud architecture optimized for their unique requirements. Security, control, performance and interaction with public cloud ecosystems are all important as firms continue to explore hybrid options, and Eucalyptus is going toe-to-toe with vendors of all stripes.</p>
<p>We'll look a bit more at the Eucalyptus-OpenStack relationship and also review some broader cloud news. Here's some of what made headlines in Eucalyptus and the cloud last week:</p>
<h2>Eucalyptus' "Turnaround" and its Evolving Relationship with OpenStack</h2>
<p>In a blog post on the Eucalyptus site, Marten Mickos highlighted that Eucalyptus recently re-architected its 4.0 release and was already making plans for 4.1. He also explained that <a href="/blog/2014/08/21/turnaround">Eucalyptus installation is now easier than ever</a>, requiring only a one line command (included in the post!) in CentOS.</p>
<p>Acknowledging that competition had been fierce since 2010 with OpenStack, CloudStack and vCloud Director solutions all entering the market, Mickos praised the Eucalyptus team for raising its game and creating top-notch AWS-compatible private cloud solutions.</p>
<p>These developments follow a previous blog post in which Marten talked about what OpenStack's success means for Eucalyptus, even as the company competes with OpenStack vendors. The private cloud market promises to be a crowded space in the years to come as organizations diversify away from public- or private-only cloud architectures, and Eucalyptus is primed to keep giving customers a cloud that just works.</p>
<p>"While many organizations have been trying to get OpenStack to work, Eucalyptus has quietly rebuilt the company and strengthened the software," he explained. "Eucalyptus is now the easiest private cloud solution to install, configure, deploy and use. And when it's up and running, you can re-use skills, tools and workloads designed for AWS."</p>
<h2>Eucalyptus to Keynote at Upcoming OpenStack Silicon Valley</h2>
<p>Eucalyptus and OpenStack are often construed as direct competitors. Forbes contributor <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2014/08/11/the-cloud-world-gets-a-shock-eucalyptus-joins-the-openstack-love-fest/">Ben Kepes framed the traditional divide well</a> by describing the "two camps" of private cloud, one centered around AWS compatibility and the other loyal to OpenStack. With appearances by both Mickos and Dholakia at OpenStack Silicon Valley, this distinction may be disappearing</p>
<p>In a blog post, <a href="/blog/2014/08/11/why-eucalyptus-keynoting-openstack-conference">Mickos explained the decision to speak at the OpenStack event</a>, starting with a look back at how Eucalyptus worked with the NASA engineers who designed the Nova fabric controller that would eventually become part of OpenStack. Other contributions such as Euca2ools have long been available to the community.</p>
<p>In light of this overarching focus on open source technologies for the cloud, Eucalyptus' spot at OpenStack Silicon Valley <a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/08/11/cloud-detente-eucalyptus-cloudstack-backers-to-speak-at-openstack-confab/">shouldn't be that surprising</a>.</p>
<p>"I want OpenStack to succeed," explained Mickos. "When that happens, Eucalyptus can also succeed. OpenStack is (in my humble opinion) the name of a phenomenon of enormous proportions. Eucalyptus is the name of a tightly focused piece of software that serves a unique use case. I am intent on finding and pursuing a mutual benefit."</p>
<p>The event will take place at a pivotal time in the life of OpenStack. Co-creator Rackspace recently confirmed that it would be leaving the pure infrastructure-as-a-service market and instead become a managed services provider, with support bundled with cloud resources. Amazon Web Services continues to grow and innovate, while Microsoft and Google invest heavily in their own stacks.</p>
<h2>What are the Technical and Political Hurdles in OpenStack's Way?</h2>
<p>OpenStack already has many champions and contributors, yet enterprises have been slow to warm to it, and it has acquired a reputation for being tough to implement - "if you have money, use VMware, <a href="https://twitter.com/JonnyNomad/status/499933964342013952">if you have time, OpenStack</a>," the saying goes. OpenStack's committee-driven structure go a long way to explain why it has frequently struggled against modern public cloud providers.</p>
<p>In an answer posted to Quora, Mickos laid out <a href="http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-largest-technical-and-business-issues-with-OpenStack-internal-to-the-project/answer/Mårten-Mickos">the challenges facing OpenStack</a> in the hopes that discussing and addressing them would set the project up for long-term success. Some of the key points included:</p>
<ul>
<li>OpenStack member companies should be permitted not only to collaborate but also compete with each other. Currently, OpenStack is a defensive arrangement that largely benefits legacy IT vendors that won't let go of old technologies and sometimes create solutions that aren't even compatible with OpenStack.</li>
<li>With no sole decision-maker (such as exists at many cloud companies), measures can only succeed with the approval of a large committee. It becomes easy for defensive players to sabotage the process by raising trivial objections.</li>
<li>Although the OpenStack community is large and varied, it is mostly steered by a few large vendors that may have particular interests not shared by everyone else.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Eucalyptus and New Life for the Private Cloud</h2>
<p>MongoDB vice president Matt Asay recently wrote about Eucalyptus and in particular how the company has turned business around in just a few years by creating a product that just works and provides a <a href="http://www.techrepublic.com/article/what-eucalyptus-suckerfish-success-means-for-amazon/">straightforward alternative to OpenStack</a>.</p>
<p>Plus, as organizations become increasingly invested in public cloud, many realize that they can save money and get better control over data by complementing AWS with something like Eucalyptus.</p>
<p>While AWS remains dominant in its space, the success of Eucalyptus as well as the rise of Azure's hybrid services indicate that private cloud still has a pivotal role to play for many enterprises. On that, industry experts such as Brad Feld have argued that <a href="http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/07/amazons-scorpion-problem.html">owning one's IT infrastructure can be more economical</a> that relying completely on AWS.</p>
<h2>Private Cloud's Role and Future</h2>
<p>The private cloud is variously touted as a lynchpin of emerging hybrid cloud architectures and a needless extension of legacy IT. While Amazon has taken a few steps away from its public-only rhetoric with time, there are still some in the cloud industry who question the value of on-premises IT.</p>
<p>Forbes contributor Joe McKendrick had a good roundup of the different perspectives on the private cloud's future, looking in particular at the issues raised during a recent BrightTalk panel. Some panelists thought that private cloud would eventually go away due to the public cloud's combination of convenience and scalability. Others questioned the value of hybrid clouds or made prescriptions for more efficient workload management via open source software, echoing Marten's points about OpenStack's importance to Eucalyptus as well as his observations that the "public" and "private" labels may not last much longer.</p>
<p>"<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2014/08/25/private-cloud-destined-to-fade-away-some-argue/">The lines are blurring between public and private cloud</a>, in sometimes quite confusing ways," said Jessica Twentyman, editor at IP Expo Europe, according to Forbes. "The issue of open standards remains paramount…without those standards, its going to be difficult to migrate workloads between and different cloud types."</p>
<p>McKendrick also had a good figure, via IDC, for establishing context for the private/public debate. Global IT spending in 2014 may top $2.1 trillion, while cloud computing will total about $100 billion. There's plenty of data and many workloads out there that aren't moving to a public cloud any time soon.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 26 Aug 2014 19:25:59 +0000cdyess3128 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/26/cloud-news-recap-august-26-2014#commentsCloud News Recap: August 5, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/05/cloud-news-recap-august-5-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>For our first Eucalyptus and cloud news roundup of August 2014, we'll start off with a look at the growing competition among providers of cloud computing services. While Amazon has led the pack for years - it was remained out front in the most recent edition of Gartner's IaaS Magic Quadrant - Microsoft and Google are using price cuts and infrastructure expansion to take on Amazon Web Services, which MongoDB executive Matt Asay memorably dubbed the potential "<a href="http://www.content-loop.com/amazon-web-services-big-getting-bigger-slowing/">800,000-pound gorilla</a>" in the room.</p>
<p>Other topics for this week include private cloud setup (it doesn't have to be hard!), what Amazon's de rigeur price cuts really mean and what DevOps has to do with AWS. Here's some of what made headlines last week:</p>
<h2>Enterprise Customers are Table Stakes in Cloud Competition</h2>
<p>Amazon's mixed second quarter earnings may have shown the toll that its AWS price cuts have taken on the bottom line. It's no time to freak out, though. On the contrary, the company's numbers show how material AWS has become to its business, whereas the cloud operations of Google, Microsoft and others barely register in their overall accounting.</p>
<p>Moreover, AWS is maturing and looking for new avenues for growth, including in the enterprise. Lowering IaaS prices and extending services that interact with on-premises infrastructure are both moves designed to court businesses that may have held out on public cloud due to concerns about cost, performance and security. Hybrid cloud is becoming the game to play since many organizations are keen to take up AWS but have significant assets over which they would prefer to keep control.</p>
<p>On the hybrid cloud front, AWS maintains a material advantage over Google Cloud Platform, as Barb Darrow illustrated in a recent post for Gigaom. Direct Connect and the various open source software platforms for connecting private clouds to AWS have <a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/08/04/true-or-false-google-cloud-is-enterprise-ready/">no equivalents in the Google ecosystem</a> yet, plus AWS's virtual private computing solution is much further along.</p>
<p>Amazon has changed its tune about hybrid cloud in the past few months. The shift comes as organizations begin reassessing the cost-effectiveness and performance of their cloud computing architectures, a process that often results in multi-cloud arrangements.</p>
<p>"Sure companies have grown up on AWS, but at some point <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/aws-worry-misplaced-welcome-to-the-maturing-cloud-7000032019/">the economics favor owning infrastructure</a>," wrote Larry Dignan for ZDNet. "Or even if an enterprise is totally public cloud happy, it will ultimately use a series of service providers. AWS was the only game in town for years. Now there are a few other options. Buyers will diversify workloads because it's just good business."</p>
<h2>What do Amazon's Price Cuts Say About its Strategy?</h2>
<p>Certainly, AWS price cuts have been a hot-button issue for industry watchers concerned about the sustainability of such a strategy as well as the effects it might have on Amazon's already impressive market share. In an article for TechRepublic, Asay tried to lear up some misunderstandings about Amazon's approach](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/amazons-critics-misunderstand-the-impact-of-its-pricing-cuts/), pointing to how the company could afford to lower prices for purposes of increasing the addressable market and driving smaller competitors out of business.</p>
<p>Already in 2014, we have seen significant issues for Rackspace as it struggles to keep pace with AWS et al. Going forward, the aggressive maneuvering of AWS, Google and Microsoft could consolidate the cloud service provider market, leaving only a few hyperscale operators.</p>
<p>"The magnitude of the price drops is scaring away many rival providers," wrote Lydia Leong, analyst at Gartner. "So is the pace of innovation. Few competitors have the deep pockets or willpower to pour money into engineering and data centers in order to compete at this level. Most are now scurrying to stake out a niche of the market where they believe they can differentiate."</p>
<h2>Odd Accounting Practices Make Sizing up Cloud Market More Difficult Than it Should be</h2>
<p>It has always been tricky to determine the size of the cloud market at large and to put each provider's numbers in context. The varying interpretations of Amazon's Q2 earnings are a case in point, with analysts unsure whether to focus on the year-over-year growth in revenue or the wider-than-expected loss. AWS doesn't even have a dedicated category in the quarterly report.</p>
<p>The issue isn't exclusive to Amazon. For example, Darrow looked at the longstanding claims of Azure becoming a $1 billion business, despite <a href="https://gigaom.com/2014/08/03/mission-near-impossible-sizing-up-the-cloud-contenders/">revenue from partners and Windows services seemingly being counted toward that total</a>.</p>
<p>Matters are even murkier with providers like IBM, HP and Oracle, all of whom have legacy appliance businesses that still produce substantial revenue and are interwoven into those organizations' respective cloud offerings. The U.S. Securities and Exchange once launched an investigation of how IBM accounted for its cloud revenue, although the probe was eventually dropped.</p>
<h2>A Simple Explainer of the Hybrid Cloud</h2>
<p>We write a lot about the hybrid cloud, often in great depth, but what if just need a quick cliffs notes? <a href="http://www.itbusinessnet.com/article/In-a-nutshell-what-is-Hybrid-cloud-3421114">Sarah Lahav of SysAid Technologies</a> has an explainer up for IT Business Net that breaks down the basic features and use cases.</p>
<p>Her summary hits upon the pros (saving, capacity bursting) and cons (complexity and dependency) of hybrid cloud. Lahav also provides a good methodology for assessing an organization's requirements to see if hybrid cloud would be a good fit.</p>
<h2>Private Cloud Setup: It Doesn't Have to be Difficult</h2>
<p>If public cloud has a reputation for convenience, then that means that private cloud must be incredibly difficult to set up, right? Not necessarily.</p>
<p>There are cases in which private cloud setup can be tough due to the peculiarities of platforms such as OpenStack, which have a mostly DIY nature that can make for rough going without professional help. But OpenStack isn't the only game in town.</p>
<p>We have a post up on the Eucalyptus blog about <a href="https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/01/private-cloud-doesnt-have-be-difficult-set">private cloud that looks at its benefits as well as its connection to AWS</a>. With hybrid cloud becoming more popular, having a relatively easy way to connect on-premises infrastructure to the public cloud is crucial, and there are tools out there beyond OpenStack, including Eucalyptus with its deep AWS API compatibility.</p>
<h2>DevOps and AWS: What's the relationship?</h2>
<p>DevOps is mostly a methodology concerned with cultural change and efficient processes. That said, it needs top-of-the-line technologies for support, and AWS is up to the task.</p>
<p>David Linthicum looked at the relationship between <a href="http://searchaws.techtarget.com/tip/Understanding-the-connection-between-AWS-DevOps">AWS and DevOps</a> in a recent TechTarget post. Basically, AWS provides the application services and configuration utilities to make DevOps works. Linthicum looks at specific features such as AWS OpWorks as well as widely used tools like Chef.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 05 Aug 2014 18:37:52 +0000cdyess3121 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/05/cloud-news-recap-august-5-2014#commentsPrivate cloud doesn't have to be difficult to set uphttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/01/private-cloud-doesnt-have-be-difficult-set
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>On paper, private cloud is the ideal computing architecture for any organization that needs:</p>
<ul>
<li>Control of its data, whether for reasons of security or compliance with applicable regulations</li>
<li>Increased business agility to deliver faster innovation from existing investments in IT resources</li>
<li>Predictable, easily managed expenditures, with most outlays on the CAPEX rather than OPEX side</li>
</ul>
<p>Moreover, the private cloud can potentially provide the best of both worlds in terms of IT. The elasticity and on-demand service of public cloud has extended into company-operated data centers, avoiding the contractual and operational complications of depending predominantly on a third-party cloud provider.</p>
<p>In practice, however, companies frequently struggle as they implement private cloud software and hardware. This has been the case even for large, experienced vendors such as HP. Ramon Baez, CIO at HP, told The Wall Street Journal that setting up a <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/06/03/h-p-cio-ramon-baez-on-adopting-private-cloud-its-hard/">private cloud "isn't for the faint of heart</a>." For starters, many legacy applications may have to be rewritten in order to be migrated to new cloud environments.</p>
<h2>Is OpenStack the cause of slow private cloud uptake?</h2>
<p>Another part of the issue may be the specific tools that companies are using to create cloud-like systems within their data centers. OpenStack, the open source project for creating IaaS in public clouds, recently marked its fourth birthday, but enterprise adoption remains muted.</p>
<p>"OpenStack … needs core cloud infrastructure features around stability and usability," wrote cloud consultant David Linthicum for InfoWorld. "Of course, the problem with foundational features is that they're pretty boring, so most of the focus has been on new features and functions layered on an <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/4-years-openstack-still-cant-get-in-the-door-242783">OpenStack IaaS cloud that perhaps isn't quite evolved enough</a> to be ready for your enterprise."</p>
<p>Right now, private cloud is mostly used for development and testing. But a lot of organizations aren't even getting that far because projects such as OpenStack are thoroughly DIY, making technical implementation challenging and potentially uneconomical.</p>
<p>Also writing for InfoWorld, Eric Knorr framed the <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/t/cloud-computing/why-the-private-cloud-has-stalled-243505?page=0,0">private cloud undertaking as a matter of replacing legacy systems one by one</a> while also exploring cutting-edge technologies such as software-defined networking. It isn't hard to see the difficulties in such efforts. Legacy applications may be mission-critical, and SDN is still nothing more than an idea for a lot of businesses.</p>
<h2>Amazon Web Services and hybrid cloud</h2>
<p>Avoiding the difficulties of private cloud, many companies have opted for public cloud deployments, fueling strong growth for providers such as Amazon Web Services. RightScale's 2014 State of the Cloud report found AWS was the leading choice for public clouds, both in the enterprise and among small businesses.</p>
<p>But placing AWS off to one side and private cloud on the other is simplistic. Amazon itself has begun offering features that push AWS closer to internal systems. At the same time, some private clouds, like Eucalyptus, enable workload compatibility with public cloud infrastructure such as AWS. These hybrid clouds are increasingly popular, with 58 percent of RightScale's respondents reporting that they rely on a <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/t/hybrid-cloud/state-of-the-cloud-report-proclaims-hybrid-king-239657">mixture of public and private services</a>.</p>
<p>Ultimately, a hybrid cloud, enabled by intuitive software and connected to a public cloud solves some of the usability challenges of traditional private cloud. It also sets up organizations for more efficient cloud and IT asset utilization.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 01 Aug 2014 14:34:50 +0000cdyess3117 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/01/private-cloud-doesnt-have-be-difficult-set#commentsWhat Does Amazon's Interest in Hybrid Cloud Computing Mean?https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/01/what-does-amazons-interest-hybrid-cloud-computing-mean
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Is Amazon coming around on hybrid clouds? For years, the company behind public cloud juggernaut Amazon Web Services has openly encouraged its customers to move away from on-premises infrastructure, and some of them have had good reason to do so.</p>
<p>The continually falling prices of AWS speak in part to the rising efficiency of Amazon's operations, and they have fueled enormous growth as more organizations tap into AWS' highly scalable resources and unique ecosystem. AWS may even be the fasting growing software in history.</p>
<p>But as AWS matures and the cloud as a whole moves from hype to reality for dev/test teams, <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2459204/hybrid-cloud/amazon-warming-up-to-hybrid-clouds.html">Amazon's approach to hybrid cloud</a> has also changed. Many enterprises have significant assets that cannot be migrated to public infrastructure in the short term or possibly ever. Plus, just as there are rational grounds for ditching the server closet for AWS instances, there are advantages to controlling critical parts of one's IT destiny by using a private or hybrid cloud.</p>
<h2>Amazon Getting into the Hybrid Cloud Game</h2>
<p>It wasn't long ago that Amazon promoted services like its virtual desktops as modern alternatives to private cloud. Why it has changed course is unclear, although one could surmise that:</p>
<ul>
<li>Competition has picked up: AWS is still the clear leader in public cloud, but both Microsoft and Google are heavily invested in IaaS and are in it for the long haul. AWS-specific hybrid functionality helps differentiate the platform.</li>
<li>Enterprises are interested in using both AWS and private cloud: Hybrid cloud is fast becoming the leading cloud deployment model among businesses of all sizes. Meeting previously risk-averse customers halfway has become critical.</li>
<li>AWS is the ideal platform for hybrid cloud: AWS API compatibility makes it possible for IT to connect their systems to the heart of AWS. Users can get access to utilities like the Identity and Access Management and also use AWS for bursting, so that it handles spikes in demand by supplying extra capacity.</li>
</ul>
<p>Amazon has worked on private clouds before, including a project for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. While it has a reputation for being the backbone of countless consumer-facing startups, AWS is just as integral to established, security-minded organizations that require on-demand resources for vast suites of applications.</p>
<p>"<a href="http://tbri.com/analyst-perspectives/analyst-commentary/pgView.cfm?commentary=2239">Hybrid [cloud] is quickly becoming a focal point of AWS' strategy</a> as the business moves into the enterprise market," wrote Jillian Mirandi, researcher at Technology Business Review. "With tools such as Amazon VPC, AWS Direct Connect and AWS Data Pipeline, customers are able to more easily extend on-premises IT through AWS. We believe that the majority of AWS revenue is driven by large enterprise clients, making it critical for AWS to invest in hybrid IT options."</p>
<h2>AWS and Private Cloud Doesn't Have to be Either/or</h2>
<p>The evolving Amazon strategy demonstrates what many firms and their respective vendors already felt - that using a private cloud need not preclude getting value from AWS. Open source software in particular has been instrumental to bridging the gap between the company data center and Amazon's facilities.</p>
<p>With the right solution, it's possible to move workloads between environments based on security, compliance and performance criteria. The predictable cost and power of on-premises appliances enables economical, efficient dev/test, while the scalability of AWS means that adapting to new requirements or spikes in demand is less taxing.</p>
<p>Many organizations are answering the "public or private cloud?" question with "both." A 2014 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2459204/hybrid-cloud/amazon-warming-up-to-hybrid-clouds.html">RightScale report</a> found that 58 percent of the 1,000 IT professionals it surveyed were using a hybrid cloud, underscoring Amazon's intelligence in pivoting to this market.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 01 Aug 2014 12:42:08 +0000cdyess3116 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/01/what-does-amazons-interest-hybrid-cloud-computing-mean#commentsCloud News Recap: July 30, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/30/cloud-news-recap-july-30-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Amazon announced its quarterly earnings last week. Since then, analysts have been reading a lot into how the retail giant's aggressive pricing war with Google has affected its overall revenues and profits.</p>
<p>Price cuts to Amazon Web Services are nothing new (Amazon has enacted more than 40 of them since 2006), but tying them so closely to their parent company's bottom line is novel. If anything, Amazon's latest figures show how AWS has become a mature and integral part of its business.</p>
<p>For now, the battle with Google et al is taking a modest toll. While revenue increased nearly one-quarter (year-over-year) to $19.3 billion, <a href="http://www.nextgov.com/cloud-computing/2014/07/amazons-cloud-price-war-google-starting-hurt/89678/">Amazon posted a $126 million loss</a>, much larger than during the same period in 2013.</p>
<p>It's no time to panic for AWS users, though. Growth is still strong, and despite rising competition from Google and Microsoft, there are more options than ever for tweaking AWS for specific requirements.</p>
<p>Indeed, combining AWS with on-premises private cloud infrastructure is increasingly popular among enterprises keen to balance control and scalability. The hybrid cloud approach will also be a key way to stave off lock-in as a few large vendors come to lead the market. We'll look at hybrid uptake and similar trends in this week's Eucalyptus and cloud news roundup.</p>
<h2>Weaker than Expected Amazon Earnings may be Explained by AWS Pricing Strategy</h2>
<p>Writing for CloudPundit, Gartner's Lydia Leong put Amazon's earnings - and AWS pricing - into context. Essentially, this quarter's weak numbers should not be mistaken for a proxy either for declining interest in IaaS in general or for deterioration of AWS' enormous market share in particular.</p>
<p>Delivering services at near-cost isn't great for the bottom line, but in the long run it does several important things, such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>Driving off competitors that cannot compete on price or match the pace of innovation</li>
<li>Widening the addressable market by removing the incentive to do everything on-premises</li>
</ul>
<p>"The size of the price cut certainly had a <a href="http://cloudpundit.com/2014/07/28/aws-2q14-and-why-the-sky-is-not-falling/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cloudpundit+%28CloudPundit%3A+Massive-Scale+Computing%29">negative impact on AWS's revenues</a> this past quarter," explained Leong. "The price cut is likely larger than AWS would have done without pressure from Google. At the same time, the slight dip in revenue, versus the magnitude of the cuts, makes it clear that AWS is still growing at a staggeringly fast pace."</p>
<p>Leong also looked at the impact of both Google, Microsoft, IBM and others on AWS' position. She predicted continued dominance for AWS while noting that it finally has "credible competitors."</p>
<h2>Amazon's Business as "Pain Management" Rather than IaaS</h2>
<p>MongoDB's Matt Asay was also bullish about AWS, based on the company's success in other core operations like retail as well its differentiation from its competitors (Leong made a similar case in arguing that IaaS was not a commodity market).</p>
<p>It took Amazon six years to get to 1 trillion objects stored, but <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/25/amazon-web-services-enterprise-domination-werner-vogels?utm_source=t.co&amp;utm_medium=readwr.it-twitter&amp;utm_content=awesmsharetools-sharebuttons&amp;utm_campaign=&amp;awesm=readwr.it_h2AC">only 12 months to double that amount</a>. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels expects a hockey stick-shaped growth trajectory.</p>
<p>Boosting Amazon's prospects is its focus on what Vogels calls "pain management for enterprises," rather than the standard term IaaS. In other words, it is addressing the traditional shortcomings of enterprise software inside the firewall.</p>
<p>Still, as Asay highlighted in the article for ReadWrite, the continual growth of AWS raises questions about data lock-in. Its dominance, or even the consolidation of the market around a handful of giant players, should make organizations think about how to keep options open through the use of open source software.</p>
<p>"What to a customer first looked like an exciting new piece of software - easy to try, no strings attached - soon infests the organization and isn't quite as easy to remove," stated Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos, according to Asay. "By using industry-standard open source software products, you reduce your lock-in down to an absolute minimum."</p>
<p>Mickos also posted an interesting chart to his Twitter account, laying out the <a href="https://twitter.com/martenmickos/status/492372159746949120">three types of lock-in and how they can be avoided</a>.</p>
<h2>What are the Main Reasons for Private Cloud Failure?</h2>
<p>If properly set up, private cloud is an excellent alternative to public infrastructure. High levels of security, control and performance can help companies save money in the long run while supporting even demanding applications. Plus, there's the opportunity to offload workloads to AWS as needed.
But success in the private cloud is far from guaranteed. David Linthicum recently authored a piece for TechTarget explaining some of the <a href="http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/tip/Bracing-for-the-failure-of-your-private-cloud-architecture?utm_campaign=scc_dcv3&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_content=1403966073##">common reasons behind substandard private cloud implementation</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li>Too much repurposing of existing hardware and software: Private cloud operating systems often set a high bar for performance that legacy assets cannot meet.</li>
<li>Overly loose management: A private cloud still requires diligence in areas such as provisioning and network access.</li>
<li>Security oversight: Security is nominally a strength of private cloud, but organizations may get complacent. It's important to pay attention to the integrity of internal systems.</li>
</ul>
<h2>The Rising Popularity of Hybrid Integrations in the Enterprise</h2>
<p>Hybrid cloud has picked up plenty of steam in the enterprise as a means of getting the best features of both public and private cloud. TechTarget associate editor Maxine Gaza looked at the Hybrid Cloud Customer Research conducted by Technology Business Research, which found that one-fifth of large enterprises had already set up two or more cloud-based systems.</p>
<p>Their reasons for doing so covered the usual bases, such as reducing total cost of ownership and making infrastructure more responsive to changing workloads. Roughly half of respondents stated that hybrid cloud had always been on their IT roadmap, while the remainder reported that it arose to meet new requirements or as a way to evolve existing products and services.</p>
<p>While plans are widespread, implementation can take time. Just as Linthicum highlighted the pitfalls of working with private cloud, analogous issues can set back hybrid setup, too.</p>
<p>"When customers purchase different clouds, they might not know upfront <a href="http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/feature/Hybrid-integration-gains-popularity-in-the-enterprise">how difficult some of the integration will be</a>," observed TBR senior analyst Jillian Mirandi, according to TechTarget.</p>
<h2>"What is DevOps?" Two Years On</h2>
<p>A few years back, O'Reilly Media vice president Mike Loukides wrote an influential blog post entitled "<a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/06/what-is-devops.html">What is DevOps</a>?" that outlined how development and operations had become siloed over the years. He recently penned an update that looks at ]DevOps more broadly as a way toward better corporate management](http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/06/revisiting-what-is-devops.html).</p>
<p>Loukides looked at the growing role of software in companies across all industries, which has raised the stakes for high-quality communication and teamwork. He also pointed out that DevOps is something that is enabled by technical tools; it is not a methodology defined by what specific solutions are used.</p>
<p>"It's always easy to think of DevOps (or of any software industry paradigm) in terms of the tools you use; in particular, it's very easy to think that if you use Chef or Puppet for automated configuration, Jenkins for continuous integration, and some cloud provider for on-demand server power, that you're doing DevOps," explained Loukides. "But DevOps isn't about tools; it's about culture, and it extends far beyond the cubicles of developers and operators.</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 30 Jul 2014 15:31:53 +0000cdyess3114 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/30/cloud-news-recap-july-30-2014#commentsAvoiding the Lock-In Trap: An Open Source Solutionhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/24/avoiding-lock-trap-open-source-solution
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Enterprises looking to maximize control over their business infrastructure are frequently advised to build a private cloud due to the free reign that such a move affords. In contrast, aligning oneself with a vendor is often seen as a move that inherently limits elasticity, since a company then must conform to that provider's particular standards. For this reason, among many others, the private cloud is growing in popularity, with Forrester survey data revealing that <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/01/27/private-public-cloud-cloudwashing#awesm=~oxzUqTktrkKycT">44 percent of businesses in the U.S. are looking to construct a private cloud</a> in 2014.</p>
<p>But as Eucalyptus CEO Mårten Mickos pointed out in a piece for Gigaom, the <a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/07/20/standardized-open-source-products-are-the-key-to-unlocking-the-lock-in-trap/">same risk of decreased business agility exists</a> with a company's self-designed platform as it would with a vendor, since the organization has the potential to box itself in by its own customizations. However, there is a way to avoid this situation entirely and reap the full advantages of cloud computing. That answer lies in standardized open source.</p>
<h2>Leveraging Open Source to Make Lock-In a Thing of the Past</h2>
<p>Mickos pointed out that during his long career in the software sector, he's witnessed many different organizations face the lock-in phenomenon. The typical situation goes something like this: A company aligns itself with a private cloud provider, thereby harnessing its software to launch what appears to be the business' own, self-regulated cloud. But that sense of control is illusory, since by relying on a single, self-contained software provider, the business in effect boxes itself in, and it is no longer able to use resources outside its chosen vendor.</p>
<p>Therefore, what began as an ostensibly cost-saving measure - the shift to a private cloud - can quickly rack up a large tab. In this way, many enterprises harness the private cloud due to its purported agility and end up with the exact opposite: a restrictive situation they can't get out of. Fortunately there is a way to merge the best of both cloud realms, and that involves the use of standardized open source products.</p>
<p>"By using industry-standard open source software products, you reduce your lock-in down to an absolute minimum," Mickos stated.</p>
<p>The efficacy of open source products lies in the easy agility they enable. Thus, the most successful businesses in the cloud are the ones that build a private cloud that relies on open source products to open up new opportunities instead of shutting the door on them. Here are some of the key benefits that arise from the use of open source products:</p>
<ul>
<li>The elimination of lock-in. When a business adopts open source products, it no longer has to rely on a single vendor in order to leverage the software.</li>
<li>A move toward self-sufficiency. By getting rid of lock-in, an enterprise takes a true step toward self-support, since it won't have to worry about its infrastructure resting on the functionality of a solitary vendor.</li>
<li>Room for experimentation. All companies thrive on trying new things, and open source software renders businesses agile enough to experiment. </li>
</ul>
</div></div></div>Thu, 24 Jul 2014 15:19:23 +0000cdyess3109 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/24/avoiding-lock-trap-open-source-solution#commentsCloud News Recap: July 22, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/22/cloud-news-recap-july-22-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>We've got a wide-reaching edition of the Eucalyptus and cloud news roundup this week, covering popular topics like Amazon Web Services and hybrid cloud, but also digging into the rise of Google as a serious IaaS player, private cloud's critical role in facilitating data security and, moreover, what trends we can expect to see in cloud computing over the rest of 2014. Here's what made headlines in the cloud last week:</p>
<h2>Amazon Looks to Extend Cloud Reach with New Facilities in Australia and Germany</h2>
<p>Amazon already operates the world's most scalable and geographically-dispersed cloud services, but it isn't resting on its laurels. TechRepublic's James Sanders had a good look at how Amazon is expanding the capabilities of AWS with new sites.</p>
<p>A facility in Sydney, Australia, will support <a href="http://www.techrepublic.com/article/vmware-and-amazon-to-expand-cloud-global-reach-with-new-facilities/">Amazon's Direct Connect</a> service for bridging the gap between on-premises hardware and AWS resources. At a time when hybrid cloud is becoming the default option for many IT departments, Amazon is ensuring that customers have options for using their private networks alongside AWS.</p>
<p>Additionally, recent analysis of network activity in the European Union indicates that Amazon may be working on a facility in Germany. In the past, AWS infrastructure in the EU was limited to sites in Ireland, but there appears to be strong demand for a facility within Germany, perhaps due in large part to privacy concerns.</p>
<h2>Oracle Looks for Slice of OpenStack Pie - How is Commercialism Affecting the OpenStack Community?</h2>
<p>Red Hat has been the dominant vendor in the OpenStack ecosystem. Its packaged solutions have stood out from the numerous DIY implementations of the open source project.</p>
<p>However, others are increasingly teaming up to provide an alternative to Red Hat's OpenStack flavors. Oracle has announced a partnership with Mirantis, following closely on the heels of the latter's collaboration with IBM.</p>
<p>Forbes contributor Ben Kepes observed that <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2014/07/17/mirantis-and-oracle-collaborate-because-my-enemys-enemy-is-my-friend/">Oracle-Mirantis is a strange combination</a>, given how Oracle is so heavily focused on proprietary technology while Mirantis bills itself as a "pure play OpenStack company." Oracle Linux and Oracle VM are now integrated into the Mirantis OpenStack distribution. The aim, Kepes argued, may be to blunt Red Hat's dominance rather than create a commercial blockbuster.</p>
<p>These new partnerships are happening against a backdrop of growing commercialism and consolidation in OpenStack, which was probably inevitable as vendors tried to create coherent solutions from a sea of APIs and other tools. Mirantis' moves, for example, are likely responses to big acquisitions such as Red Hat picking up eNovance. Larger vendors are acqui-hiring talent as OpenStack revenue lags the hype.</p>
<p>Accordingly, the November 2014 OpenStack summit in Paris may be one of the last settings in which the broader OpenStack community - small shops and contributors in addition to the big players - gathers in one place. The continued troubles of Rackspace may also contribute to the decline of the OpenStack community as we know it.</p>
<p>"As events focused on Cloud Foundry, Docker, and AWS grow, where does this leave OpenStack?," asked Brian Gracely in an article for IT Knowledge Exchange. "An IaaS platform that keep dabbling in PaaS, containers, bare metal and isn't sure if it's ideally suited to be a public cloud or private cloud platform. Has it finally begun to reach the destiny that it's claimed for several years, 'the Linux of the cloud'? We know how all those Linux variations turned out."</p>
<h2>'Seamless' Hybrid Cloud, Building the Internet of Things and the Cloud's Direction in 2014</h2>
<p>On the Eucalyptus site, we've got a new article up on <a href="/blog/2014/07/17/3-cloud-trends-and-narratives-rest-2014">three major trends in cloud computing</a> for the rest of 2014. We go in depth about</p>
<ul>
<li>The ideal of the "seamless" hybrid cloud, and how we might not be there yet.</li>
<li>How the Internet of Things is stoking demand for developers.</li>
<li>Evolving stances toward cloud security and why they may benefit private and hybrid cloud.</li>
</ul>
<p>The article also touches upon the common issue of asking "public or private?" when it comes to cloud deployments. In the future, these seemingly well-defined categories may become similar, and organizations may use different terms to refer to their increasingly hybrid infrastructure.</p>
<h2>More Price Cuts are Coming for AWS as Competition with Google Heats Up</h2>
<p><a href="http://fortune.com/2014/07/15/amazon-web-services-svp-more-price-cuts-are-coming/">AWS is famous for its price cuts</a>, having lowered its rates more than 40 times since 2006. Amazon vice president Andy Jassy has told users to expect more reductions over the long term, according to Fortune.</p>
<p>While AWS has been at it for years, price cuts have more recently been a hallmark of the growing competition in public cloud between Amazon, Microsoft and especially Google. <a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/07/18/nobody-doubts-googles-cloud-intentions-anymore/">Gigaom's Barb Darrow</a> took a look at how substantial the search giant's IaaS business has become, with one analyst projecting 84 percent growth and more than $1.5 billion in revenue this year.</p>
<p>Others expect the public IaaS market to eventually equalize around these three vendors, despite Amazon's current dominance. Still, the gap between AWS and everyone else is substantial and would take years of considerable effort to close.</p>
<p>"Google has some catching-up to do here," wrote Darrow. "In the past 2 years, Amazon has done a good job getting enterprise software vendors like Oracle and Red Hat - many of which it competes with now — to offer their products on AWS, while working directly with enterprise customers and big systems integrators as well."</p>
<h2>Hybrid Cloud Entering the Mainstream, According to IBM Executive</h2>
<p>IBM's forays into the cloud have not significantly impacted leading IaaS providers, but the company is often a bellwether for where the industry as a whole is heading. From its struggles in hardware to its acquisition of SoftLayer to get a foothold in hybrid cloud services, IBM is a fairly reliable indicator.</p>
<p>SoftLayer founder Lance Crosby recently told The Wall Street Journal that expansion into the enterprise has been mostly through <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/07/14/ibm-exec-says-hybrid-cloud-entering-mainstream/">growing uptake of hybrid cloud</a>. He stated that two-thirds of SoftLayer customers operate single-tenancy clouds in which they can mix and match physical and virtualized resources.</p>
<p>Currently, SoftLayer operates 13 data centers. It plans to open four more as a part of IBM's $1.2 billion commitment to data center infrastructure.</p>
<h2>What are the Top Benefits of the Private Cloud?</h2>
<p>In another piece available on the Eucalyptus site, we broke down some of the <a href="/blog/2014/07/16/top-benefits-private-cloud">core benefits of private cloud</a>, which remains a vital option for organizations even as public cloud continues to grow. Our short article looks at advantages of the private cloud such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>Mitigating shadow IT</li>
<li>Reducing overall IT costs</li>
<li>Automating application deployment</li>
</ul>
</div></div></div>Tue, 22 Jul 2014 18:18:56 +0000cdyess3108 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/22/cloud-news-recap-july-22-2014#comments3 Cloud Trends and Narratives for the Rest of 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/17/3-cloud-trends-and-narratives-rest-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>So much has been written about cloud computing that one might forget that the cloud is still a relatively new and rapidly evolving field. The underlying technologies, as well as how stakeholders talk about them, will inevitably change in the coming years.</p>
<p>For example, a few years from now, terms such as private cloud and public cloud that dominate today's discussions could fall out of fashion as organizations realize that the best cloud computing architectures blend on-premises systems and shared infrastructure. Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos predicted as much on Twitter in June 2014, positing that "In the future, we won't see 'public' and 'private' clouds as some black and white thing. <a href="https://twitter.com/martenmickos/statuses/473490237268586496">We may not even use those words</a>."</p>
<p>The increasingly blurred line between private and public cloud is just one of many prominent trends and conversations that characterize the cloud in 2014. Here are a few others:</p>
<h2>Has Hybrid Cloud Become Seamless Yet?</h2>
<p>In theory, hybrid cloud offers the best of both worlds:</p>
<ul>
<li>The control, security and performance of on-premises infrastructure (private cloud)</li>
<li>The elasticity, on-demand resources and self-service of a highly scalable ecosystem such as Amazon Web Services (public cloud)</li>
<li>The ability to seamlessly move workloads between the two as needed, especially in cases in which additional capacity is required (i.e., cloud bursting, a common hybrid cloud use case).</li>
</ul>
<p>For this reason, organizations have understandably made big plans for hybrid cloud deployments, with Gartner famously predicting that half of large enterprises would have one in service by 2017. But as that projection suggests, we may still be a few years away from widespread mainstream adoption. Could technical implementation details or shortcomings in how different environments are connected be impediments?</p>
<p>Writing for F5's DevCentral blog, Lori MacVittie seemed to think so. She pointed to ongoing over-reliance on manual workflows and disparate services that don't live up to the seamless ideal.</p>
<p>"Right now, <a href="https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/the-future-of-cloud-is-hybrid-and-seamless">hybrid cloud models are disconnected</a> and managed manually," she wrote. "Oh, there are scripts and APIs, yes. But those are mainly concerned with provisioning and management. They aren't about actually using the cloud as the extension of the data center it was promised to be."</p>
<p>MacVittie noted that the hybrid cloud model had already become the standard for enterprises. The challenge, then, is more tactical, involving decisions about what open source software to use to enable high-performing, largely automated infrastructure.</p>
<h2>The Internet of Things Needs More Work, Driving Demand for Developers</h2>
<p>Few IT trends have been as hyped as the Internet of Things, the broad term for an ubiquitous network of IP-enabled endpoints and embedded sensors. The IoT could encompass tens of billions of devices and be an enormous market for commercial services.</p>
<p>Cloud service providers will undoubtedly be key players in the IoT revolution. Their infrastructure, platforms and software will be instrumental to supporting new connections and making sense of massive amounts of data.</p>
<p>Even more so than hybrid cloud, though, the <a href="http://www.eweek.com/cloud/five-trends-show-why-cloud-computing-is-far-from-mature.html">IoT will take time to come into its own</a>. Ziff Brothers Investment analyst Eric Lundquist argued that competing standards could delay its development for years, according to eWEEK.</p>
<p>Along the way, millions of programmers take up IoT projects. ABI Research has predicted that there will be more than 3 million of them by 2019, accounting for 10 percent of all software developers.</p>
<h2>Attitudes Toward Cloud Security Continue to Evolve</h2>
<p>IT departments block cloud services - often popular or consumer-facing ones - for reasons that aren't always well communicated. Certainly, there are major security and compliance risks in letting workers use anything that they want to, but some cloud solutions are shunned without much consideration of what they actually do.</p>
<p>Public cloud in particular is heavily scrutinized in many security discussions. Gradually, however, organizations are becoming more comfortable with AWS and its ilk, driving strong growth in the shared infrastructure market - a Research and Markets report projects that it could total <a href="http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/infrastructure/does-the-enterprise-secretly-love-the-public-cloud.html">$6.6 billion by 2019</a>. Balancing these public resources with private systems through a hybrid arrangement can address common. security issues</p>
<p>"<a href="http://www.datamation.com/cloud-computing/cloud-computing-in-2014-three-key-trends.html">This [security] problem isn't necessarily IT's fault</a>. There were no unified cloud security tools and no consistent policies in place to manage the security, compliance, governance and legal risks of cloud services," observed Rajiv Gupta, founder and CEO at Skyhigh Networks, according to Datamation.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 17 Jul 2014 16:55:09 +0000cdyess3104 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/17/3-cloud-trends-and-narratives-rest-2014#commentsTop Benefits of Private Cloudhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/16/top-benefits-private-cloud
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Private cloud can be a confusing term. Organizations may easily conflate it with legacy systems that have received slight, superficial modification - a phenomenon known as cloudwashing - or internal IT infrastructure that simply can't match public cloud's versatility.</p>
<p>In truth, though, private cloud is increasingly cost-effective and cutting-edge. With the right platform, enterprises can evolve their IT infrastructure while still retaining control and ensuring performance. Here's what private cloud can do for today's organizations.</p>
<h2>Mitigate Shadow IT</h2>
<p>Employees increasingly expect the convenience of consumer applications and mobile devices wherever they go. Naturally, many of them have brought this affinity into the workplace, often going behind IT's back to use unapproved services.</p>
<p>A 2014 Netskope report estimated that <a href="http://www.telepacificinformation.com/public/shadow-it-purchasing-much-larger-than-you-realize/">shadow IT could be 10 times the size of the known cloud market</a>. How can organizations address the habits of workers while also maintaining control and compliance?</p>
<p>Private cloud can run workloads with particular security requirements inside the company data center. At the same time, it can interface with public cloud through deeply compatible APIs. Such a hybrid arrangement balances control and usability, creating additional flexibility for users and greater value for the business</p>
<p>"IT has two choices: They can support the business or <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/emc/2014/06/10/merging-the-public-and-the-private-hybrid-clouds-takeover/">have people go around them</a>," EMC Cloud Solutions senior director Brian Gracely told Forbes. "That driver, along with technology maturity, is why we see people feeling comfortable with the hybrid cloud."</p>
<h2>Automate Deployment</h2>
<p>Legacy IT systems are notorious for long provisioning processes and inefficiencies. One of the core benefits of private cloud is the major reduction in resource fulfillment wait times.
Activities that once required extensive manual effort can be automated. Teams no longer have to schedule around weeks-long provisioning and can instead get what they need in a matter of minutes. They can also take greater advantage of automation tools such as Puppet and Chef to streamline dev/test.</p>
<h2>Reduce IT Costs</h2>
<p>IT setups often underutilize assets, failing to get the most value from money spent. Public cloud can reduce expenditures across many areas by transforming CAPEX into OPEX, but it too comes with hidden costs that can pile up over time.</p>
<p>To ensure cost-effective practices, each organization has to assess which applications would benefit from a cloud environment and which require on-premises resources. In many cases, a private cloud provides superior performance and control, as well as lower costs, compared to infrastructure-as-a-service. Businesses also keep open the option for running some workloads in public cloud.</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 16 Jul 2014 16:01:00 +0000cdyess3103 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/16/top-benefits-private-cloud#commentsCloud News Recap: July 15, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/15/cloud-news-recap-july-15-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>As we reach the middle of July, there's plenty to cover on the hybrid cloud front. Amazon Web Services continues to pick up market share and maintain an edge over Microsoft Azure and other competitors. The dominance of AWS, as well as Amazon's recent attempts to push its services further into the data center, underscore the growing range of options that organizations have for modernizing infrastructure to bridge private and public environments. Here are some of the top Eucalyptus and cloud news from recent weeks.</p>
<h2>Amazon Takes on Box and Dropbox with New Storage and Document Collaboration Offerings</h2>
<p>AWS is first and foremost an ecosystem for developers, but Amazon's recent moves show that the company plans to extend its cloud services to enterprise and line-of-business users. The launch of Amazon Cloud Drive in 2011 received little fanfare and was off the radar until this year's unveiling of the Amazon Fire Phone, which uses it to support unlimited photo storage.</p>
<p>At its recent summit in New York City, Amazon unveiled a few big plays for business, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Zocalo, a document collaboration platform based on S3. It sports a Web interface and synchronization across all devices with Zocalo clients.</li>
<li>Cognito, a framework designed for mobile development. It gives dev/test teams shortcuts for implementing critical but mundane features like user profile access.</li>
<li>Amazon Mobile Analytics, a service for collecting and processing application data at scale.</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2452983/iaas/5-key-takeaways-from-amazon-s-big-cloud-day.html">NetworkWorld's Brandon Butler</a> had a good rundown of what the new announcements mean. Similarly, <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/12/amazon-web-services-moves-beyond-developer-tools/">TechCrunch's Frederic Lardinois</a> took a look at Amazon's move beyond the developer space.</p>
<h2>Netflix Announces Security Monkey for AWS Configurations Monitoring and Analysis</h2>
<p>On the Netflix Tech Blog, the Neflix Security Team announced that it had open sourced its <a href="http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/06/announcing-security-monkey-aws-security.html">Security Monkey</a> utility for monitoring and analyzing AWS configurations. They stated that while AWS has adequate built-in visibility of systems, its change tracking and evaluation capabilities are limited.</p>
<p>Security Monkey is one of the company's many simian-themed tools, created in 2011 to help stay on top of IAM users, S3 bucket policies and other requirements. It features a watcher, notifier and auditor, and common use cases include checking the history of a configuration or justifying an audit.</p>
<p>"Its approach fits well with the general Simian Army approach of continuously monitoring and detecting potential anomalies and risky configurations, and we look forward to seeing how other AWS users choose to extend and adapt its capabilities," the team wrote.</p>
<h2>Learning the Ropes with the Eucalyptus 4.0 Video Series</h2>
<p>Eucalyptus 4.0 is filled with significant upgrades, including edge networking, scalable object storage (with support for RiakCS) and a mobile-friendly user console. Released in May, Eucalyptus 4.0 makes private cloud setup more straightforward than ever while enabling easier handling of workloads.</p>
<p>Over at In The Vapor, Eucalyptus' Paul Weiss has posted a series of videos about how one of Eucalyptus's customers <a href="http://www.inthevapor.com/2014/06/eucalyptus-4-0-video-series-the-journey/">got up and running with Eucalyptus 4.0</a>. Starting with a single machine, the user then installed Eucalyptus FastStart and added pre-built images and capacity. The procedure is a good guide for anyone looking to get started with Eucalyptus 4.0</p>
<h2>Hybrid Cloud as the Inevitable Successor to Private Cloud</h2>
<p>At SYS-CON, Archie Hendryx, principal vArchitect at VCE, talks about the enterprise-wide shift toward hybrid cloud. The article looks at how the hybrid cloud momentum movement has grown out of concerns about public cloud security and performance, alongside the desire for greater agility in application dev/test. Hybrid cloud may follow the trajectory of private cloud, building upon existing infrastructure to increase scalability and responsiveness to requirements.</p>
<p>"<a href="http://www.sys-con.com/node/3115754">We will certainly see the adoption of hybrid architectures and models grow</a>, much like we saw the adoption of private clouds," wrote Hendryx. "Over the next year the model that we'll more than likely see is the continuation of legacy application infrastructures that preserve organizations' large investments and are then coupled with hybrid automation solutions that enable them to leverage on demand cloud resources. The security concerns of public clouds as well as the need to ensure application performance and optimization will be the key drivers for this."</p>
<h2>Hybrid Cloud the Right Fit for the Enterprise</h2>
<p>Speaking to ZDNet, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels explained how the company's cloud messaging has evolved over time. Whereas there was once discussion of "real" and "fake" clouds (usually to refer to public and private cloud, respectively), now cloud providers realize the widespread affinity for hybrid cloud.</p>
<p>"<a href="http://www.zdnet.com/aws-vogels-on-hybrid-cloud-mobile-big-data-technical-debt-7000031492/">Hybrid [cloud] is important to us</a>," Vogels told ZDNet's Larry Dignan. "Obviously, we're the public cloud, but the reality is that in the enterprise there will be things on-premises."</p>
<p>The interview also includes Vogels' thoughts on high-performance computing, Amazon's growing push in mobile and MadReduce vs RedShift. He also goes into detail about how Amazon itself is hybrid shop supported by both AWS and on-premises infrastructure.</p>
<h2>Comparing AWS and Azure</h2>
<p>Gartner has pegged AWS as the clear leader in public cloud IaaS, with only Azure mounting the semblance of a challenge. TechTarget senior news director Bridget Botelho recently authored a thorough report <a href="http://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/2240223645/AWS-vs-Azure-face-off-cloud-costs-commitments-and-SLAs?utm_campaign=saws_bizapps1">comparing the two leading public cloud platforms</a> on cost, support, service-level agreements and commitment plans/Reserved Instances.</p>
<p>The report is worth reading as both a technical explainer and a buying guide that can help organizations find just the right fit for their environments. Forrester analyst James Staten also provides commentary throughout.</p>
<p>"Long-time Windows Server customers see Azure as the natural path to the cloud, but a side-by side comparison with AWS may show it isn't the best fit," wrote Botelho.</p>
<h2>Google et al Take on AWS with Open Source Initiative</h2>
<p>Given AWS's current dominance in public cloud computing, it's natural for its smaller competitors to try to band together to create an alternative. To that end, Google, IBM, Red Hat and Microsoft all recently coalesced around Google's open source Kubernetes project, which used to be the proprietary secret behind how the Web giant deployed its applications via the cloud.</p>
<p>"Some of the biggest enterprises in the world are throwing their hats into the ring," said <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/cloud-computing-giants-add-to-open-source-credentials-with-kubernetes/">Google Cloud Platform executive Miles Ward</a> about the announcement, according to The New York Times. "We have built a stupefying amount of software using this."</p>
<p>The news was timed to coincide with the AWS Summit in New York. Project contributors highlighted the advantage of going after the hybrid cloud market (especially in light of how many on-premises assets are still in use), although as Amazon's own recent efforts demonstrate, all public cloud providers are warming to the idea of hybrid infrastructure and seeking a slice for themselves.</p>
<h2>Will There Ever be a Clear Leader of OpenStack?</h2>
<p>The reasons for OpenStack's slow uptake in the enterprise are myriad: It's too difficult to implement and may offer only slight savings over commercial solutions, to name but two. Moreover, it doesn't have well-defined leadership, Red Hat's extensive contributions notwithstanding.</p>
<p>Depending on one's perspective, this lack of vendor-dictated direction could be construed as a drawback or a perk. In a piece for VentureBeat, OpenStack Foundation chairman Alan Clark takes the latter stance, telling everyone to stop waiting on a "king of OpenStack."</p>
<p>Clark explains that OpenStack is uniquely positioned to succeed without an assigned leader. Its open structure, he argues, enables great variety, community, healthy competition and expansion. While the ongoing uptake of AWS and alternative open source software suggest that OpenStack faces significant headwinds, the project's stakeholders feel that they're still on the right path.</p>
<p>"<a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/10/king-of-openstack/?utm_source=hootsuite&amp;utm_campaign=hootsuite">OpenStack itself creates a barrier to dominance</a>," wrote Clark. "OpenStack's foundational structure precludes and promotes transparency, inclusion and leadership through meritocracy rather than a dictatorship."</p>
<h2>Using Docker and Eucalyptus for Managing Repositories and Containers</h2>
<p>Docker is one of the hottest names in cloud computing at the moment. In early June, Google announced that it would be integrating the open source container management tool into App Engine (there was already basic support in Compute Engine). Docker has also been a big part of the growing Kubernetes initiative discussed above.</p>
<p>Auspiciously, on-premises Docker management via Eucalyptus will be one of the topics at the July 29 Eucalyptus 4.0 Meetup Reboot in Mountain View, California. There will also be conversations about the Eucalyptus Management Console as well as an overview of the changes in Eucalyptus 4.0. You can register for the meetup or view more details <a href="http://www.meetup.com/Bay-Area-Eucalyptus-Cloud-User-Group/events/191191002/">here</a>.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:52:06 +0000cdyess3102 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/07/15/cloud-news-recap-july-15-2014#commentsDevelopers are the Key to the Internet of Thingshttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/27/developers-are-key-internet-things
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The Internet of Things is undoubtedly one of the defining IT trends of the day. Projections about the IoT's potential size and influence are staggering:</p>
<ul>
<li>Cisco estimated that 50 billion IP-enabled devices could be connected to the IoT by 2020.</li>
<li>McKinsey predicted that IoT business could net more than <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekavis/2014/06/26/the-internet-of-things-will-radically-change-your-big-data-strategy/">$6 trillion in revenue by 2025</a>.</li>
<li>By the end of the decade, the IoT could be orders of magnitude larger than all mobile devices and PCs currently in use.</li>
</ul>
<p>Still, what is the IoT, exactly, and how will it affect businesses and consumers? Simply connecting billions of sensors and endpoints to the Internet won't be enough to create value or ensure a good user experience. At least one developer has already made fun of "<a href="https://twitter.com/siegel/status/481871045407023104">the day that my thermostat can stream ads to my watch</a>," referring to the forays of tech giants such as Google into the IoT space.</p>
<p>For the IoT to really take off, developers have to get on board and create high-performing applications. Cloud computing architectures such as a private cloud paired with Amazon Web Services could be instrumental to the development of top-flight software that can reach users reliably at scale.</p>
<h2>The Internet of Things: Developers Wanted</h2>
<p>If the IoT lives up to the hype, it will provide an unprecedented opportunity for DevOps-practicing organizations capable of rapidly producing and iterating applications. By sheer size, IoT could become the largest platform ever.</p>
<p>"The growth in IoT will <a href="http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2636073">far exceed that of other connected devices</a>. By 2020, the number of smartphones, tablets and PCs in use will reach about 7.3 billion units," stated Gartner research director Peter Middleton. "In contrast, the IoT will have expanded at a much faster rate, resulting in a population of about 26 billion units at that time."</p>
<p>The value of the IoT won't be in its infrastructure, but in the myriad applications and services that make it work. Naturally, creating such a system will take enormous contributions from developers. A VisionMobile report estimated that while only 300,000 programmers were working on IoT projects in 2014, the number could <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/06/27/internet-of-things-developers-jobs-opportunity">balloon to 4.5 million by 2020</a>.</p>
<p>As happened with PCs and mobile devices, commodity hardware and networks will become valuable through bundled services and sophisticated software. To create such solutions, shops can use a test cloud to streamline their process and ultimately refine their products.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 27 Jun 2014 20:00:00 +0000cdyess3087 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/27/developers-are-key-internet-things#commentsThe risks and rewards of hybrid cloudhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/26/risks-and-rewards-hybrid-cloud
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Many companies are choosing to mix and match on-premises systems with public cloud ecosystems such as Amazon Web Services. There's much to be gained, in terms of dev/test efficiency as well as control over IT costs, from setting up a hybrid cloud enabled by flexible open source software. However, there are risks, too, especially in regard to security, coordination of different IT silos and overall implementation.</p>
<h2>Hybrid cloud poised to be the largest segment of cloud computing market</h2>
<p>In light of its enormous potential benefits, it's no surprise that hybrid cloud is set to soon become the standard in virtualized IT infrastructure. A 2014 TechNavio survey of 100 cloud companies worldwide found that by 2017 roughly half of large organizations <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/hybrid-cloud-will-be-largest-cloud-segment-analyst-firm-technavio-7000030800/">will have deployed a hybrid cloud</a> to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Decide where and how to run each workload and store application data.</li>
<li>Gain more control over security than they would have on pure public cloud.</li>
<li>Give mission-critical applications the performance they require.</li>
</ul>
<p>In 2013, the total hybrid cloud market was worth slightly more than $21 billion, a modest sum but one that leaves plenty of room for growth. Plus, the appeal of hybrid cloud isn't lost on small and mid-size businesses, either, since they may take it up to intelligently utilize their limited bandwidth.</p>
<h2>Overcoming challenges in setting up a hybrid cloud</h2>
<p>Still, setting up a hybrid cloud is not a light undertaking. Companies have to deeply understand and consistently monitor their workloads before designing and implementing infrastructure that is up to the task.</p>
<p>Writing for InformationWeek, Kurt Marko aptly noted that there is <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/5-hybrid-cloud-gotchas/d/d-id/1269558">no free lunch in hybrid cloud</a>, pointing to issues such as security and integration. In addressing these issues, buyers cannot simply seek out the least expensive solution. E​ach organization has particular needs, making it impractical to take up a one-size-fits-all solution that was chosen for its price alone.</p>
<p>"The focus can sometimes be on which service offers the lowest cost," stated HP's Peter Mansell , according to The Register. "<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/23/hybrid_cloud/">But if you don't have control of all IT resources</a>, how can you make an educated decision on the best location for the workload?"</p>
<p>To make hybrid cloud administration easier, IT departments have looked for tools or coordinating provisioning across environments, along with APIs that enable automatic management. Hybrid cloud software that features deep AWS API compatibility can facilitate seamless workload migration, tight security and granular control of data.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 26 Jun 2014 20:00:00 +0000cdyess3089 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/26/risks-and-rewards-hybrid-cloud#commentsHow big is the cloud services market?https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/19/how-big-cloud-services-market
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Cloud computing is a hard market to pin down. The sheer size of shadow IT - the practice of using applications and services that are not approved by the IT department - complicates any attempt to paint a realistic picture of how invested organizations really are in cloud infrastructure and software. Are industry observers lowballing or actually overestimating current levels of cloud spending?</p>
<h2>Cloudability's managed spending numbers suggest vast market for cloud services</h2>
<p>Certainly, cloud-based services are already a multibillion-dollar market. IDC has estimated that worldwide spending on IaaS, PaaS and SaaS totaled <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24298013">more than $47 billion in 2013</a>, and predicted that the number would rise to $107.2 billion by 2018. SaaS constituted the bulk of spending in both projections.</p>
<p>However, these numbers pertain mostly to packaged solutions bought from providers, as suggested by the high share of SaaS. As such, they might not account for the emerging role of cloud as a broad system of services and APIs that can be tapped as alternatives to, and replacements for, in-house code.</p>
<p>Moreover, cloud adoption may be mirroring the historical uptake of open source software, which has fulfilled a similar role in providing organizations with standard, flexible tools and resources that can be tweaked for particular workflows. For example, Amazon Web Services APIs now give teams something to develop against, much as Linux and company have long been a sensible starting point for projects covering everything from server software to mobile OSes such as Android.</p>
<p>Cloudability, which provides visibility into spending levels on AWS and similar platforms, has in only three years grown from $1 million to $1 billion in managed cloud spending. The cloud's open source-esque uptake may be accountable for this surge. Cloud services are increasingly viewed as the backbone of the supply chain, rather than discrete products that are walled-off from the rest of IT.</p>
<p>Enterprises are keen to increase spending even further. However, they'll need insight into what they're getting for their money, as well as proper mechanisms - such as software that enables workload migration between public and private cloud environments - for keeping expenses in check.</p>
<p>"Cloud analytics really isn't about cutting costs, like most people think, but rather to see <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/06/12/cloud-computing-growth-forecast-signal">where it's happening and where it could be best spent</a>," Cloudability CEO Mat Ellis told ReadWrite contributor Matt Asay. "In fact, nearly all of our enterprise customers are using us to help them expand their cloud usage, but in a controlled and efficient way. Once you've demonstrated this stuff works and makes you a profit there's really no stopping it."</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 20 Jun 2014 01:03:00 +0000cdyess3091 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/19/how-big-cloud-services-market#commentsHybrid cloud: The most cost-effective approach to infrastructurehttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/13/hybrid-cloud-most-cost-effective-approach-infrastructure
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>There's really no straightforward answer to "private or public cloud?," since no two organizations have the same requirements for security, control and application performance. In many instances, the best path forward is hybrid infrastructure, which provides all the benefits of cloud computing - elasticity, self-service and the like - with added mechanisms for controlling when and where workloads run.</p>
<p>Gartner vice president Milind Govekar recently outlined why the hybrid cloud - i.e., a platform combining internal systems with a public ecosystem such as Amazon Web Services - is <a href="http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2745417">so appealing</a>. Key reasons include:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Isolation of selected workloads</strong>: Mission-critical applications and sensitive data can be run from within the safety of the data center, even as other processes are offloaded to the public cloud.</li>
<li><strong>Improved cost-efficiency</strong>: By deciding how to handle each workload, organizations can avoid the unnecessary expenses of constantly running public cloud instances</li>
<li><strong>Superior utilization of IT assets</strong>: Much infrastructure is underutilized. With a hybrid cloud, on-premises hardware can be put to work powering particular workloads and supporting efficient dev/test.</li>
<li><strong>Better availability and resiliency</strong>: Hybrid cloud enables excellent flexibility through cloud bursting (leveraging public cloud resources in demanding situations) and improved disaster recovery.</li>
</ul>
<p>Hybrid cloud is ultimately an economical and practical solution for the evolving requirements of today's organizations. While public cloud may entice buyers through increasingly low prices, public infrastructure alone isn't always the best value. It may fall short of security demands and/or be less cost-effective than simply owning infrastructure outright.</p>
<p>"It's generally accepted server price and performance improves by 50 percent every two years, and we're not seeing public cloud prices reduced <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/buy-or-rent-the-private-or-public-cloud-conundrum-7000029981/">by 50 percent every two years</a> on a compound basis," Rob McCammon, director of product management at Cleversafe, told ZDNet.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 13 Jun 2014 22:00:00 +0000cdyess3093 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/13/hybrid-cloud-most-cost-effective-approach-infrastructure#comments3 Reasons You Need a Private Cloudhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/05/3-reasons-you-need-private-cloud
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The meteoric rise of the public cloud has certainly created pressure for companies with existing IT infrastructure and data center operators to emulate the speed and efficiency of Web-scale providers. Public clouds make it incredibly convenient to spin up developer resources in an instant, creating pockets of "shadow IT" and leaving on-premises hardware underutilized. But as more and more internal users forego on-prem infrastructure resources to flock to the public cloud, costs can quickly escalate with the pay-as-you-go model and extensive utilization.</p>
<p>"Even just taking the sticker price of a medium virtual machine running 24x7, associated with 50GB of storage and a 5 percent to 10 percent growth rate, and snapshots and operating system licenses, you can start to see how quickly that stuff starts to add up," stated <a href="http://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/2240219066/Enterprises-hit-tipping-point-in-AWS-cloud-vs-private-cloud-costs">Gartner analyst Kyle Hilgendorf</a>, according to TechTarget.</p>
<p>Granted, the public cloud's near-infinite elasticity and scope make it incredibly appealing, especially to startups that are reticent to spend precious budget to manage their own infrastructure and who have an acute need for resources that scale as smoothly as possible alongside operations. There's the perception that public cloud is inherently cheaper than private cloud if only because the expenses are small chunks of OPEX rather than large CAPEX outlays on servers and equipment.</p>
<p>But is private cloud really that costly relative to public cloud? It is easy for customers to end up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a month just to run non revenue-generating operations on someone else's infrastructure. Plus, while the private cloud may have been beyond the means of many companies in the past, it is increasingly affordable now due to open source software and better tools for automating development, testing and deployment.</p>
<h2>3 Reasons for Choosing Private Cloud: Security, Performance and Cost</h2>
<p>As a set of systems under the direct management of the organization rather than an external provider, the private cloud is definitely attractive to anyone with high data security or compliance requirements. <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240169614/Trend-Micro-Encryption-is-the-foundation-of-cloud-security">Trend Micro solutions architect Udo Schneider</a> told ComputerWeekly that keeping assets in house has strong appeal for companies that fear losing control over key assets.</p>
<p>Security isn't the only reason to pick private cloud, though, even if it is one of the most commonly cited ones. Far from being a cost center, today's private cloud can enable fuller utilization of IT and stable costs over the long term.</p>
<p>"In some cases, enterprises and government agencies cannot get the hardware or infrastructure that a particular application needs from a public cloud provider," <a href="http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/544324/private_cloud_appeal_lies_cost_governance_uxc/">XC Cloud Solutions CEO Sean Mathieson told ARN</a>. "[S]ecurity or governance issues [also] force enterprises and government agencies into using a private cloud."</p>
<p>More specifically, paying the upfront cost for a top-flight server can turn into a sound investment. Dev/test and operations teams retain control over infrastructure and be confident in what level of performance to expect.</p>
<p>Public cloud instances may be inexpensive at first or in moderation, but they can become more difficult to deal with as requirements change and overall utilization - not just by one organization, but by many others accessing the same machines - fluctuates. Reliability may degrade from one day to the next, incurring significant costs in terms of lost business opportunities, service outages and damage to brand reputation.</p>
<h2>Private Cloud as a Complement to Public Cloud</h2>
<p>Open source software and rich functionality has made private clouds easier than ever to set up, manage and get good ROI on. Moreover, companies no longer have to make a stark choice between public and private cloud - the two can work together as part of a hybrid cloud computing architecture that leverages the best features of each in workflows such as cloud bursting.</p>
<p>"It's much cheaper for companies to spike at peak loads to a public cloud than trying to plan a complete transition to a public cloud," wrote <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/27/your-hybrid-cloud-not-if-but-when-and-how/">Cloudyn CEO Sharon Wagner</a> for VenutreBeat. "From a financial perspective, enterprises will maximize existing investment in their data centers."</p>
<p>Hybrid cloud showcases the best of private cloud, namely security, control and the ability to keep costs in check by running particular workloads internally. According to Gartner, more than half of large enterprises will have a hybrid cloud in place by 2017, underscoring the importance of private cloud within the IT environments of the future.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 05 Jun 2014 17:30:09 +0000cdyess3046 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/05/3-reasons-you-need-private-cloud#commentsIs the Public Cloud/Private Cloud Distinction Going Away?https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/04/public-cloudprivate-cloud-distinction-going-away
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Organizations are clamoring to move more data to public cloud. Why? Cost certainly seems like a factor. Writing for GigaOM, AppZero's Greg O'Connor put forward the notion of "Bezos' Law" as a corollary to Moore's Law (the principle that computer processor speeds double every 18 months). Named for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, this "law" posits that the cost of compute resources <a href="https://gigaom.com/2014/04/19/moores-law-gives-way-to-bezoss-law/">declines about 50 percent every three years</a>, as cloud providers deploy additional, more powerful infrastructure. The ongoing price cuts by Amazon Web Services and Google would appear to validate Bezos' Law.</p>
<p>Of course, price isn't everything. Functionality, convenience and ability to meet an organization's particular requirements are also front and center. AWS has checked off all three boxes for a growing number of companies; it dominated Gartner's most recent IaaS Magic Quadrant. Large enterprises and startups alike are warming to the idea of on-demand resources that are relatively easy to access and scale.</p>
<h2>Private, Public and Hybrid: Will There be a Clear Difference Going Forward?</h2>
<p>The rapid uptake of public cloud is a good opportunity consider the future of private and hybrid cloud, and whether these categories will even matter in a few years. For all of its ease of use and scalability, public cloud may not be a silver bullet for every company, but instead of avoiding it entirely, IT departments may meld it with on-premises infrastructure for high levels of control, security and performance. Black-and-white distinctions between cloud deployment types may be lost.</p>
<p>ReadWrite's Matt Asay recently looked at the effects of public cloud growth on in-house data centers. Considering a Twitter reply from Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos, Asay hypothesized that, to the extent that private cloud architectures remain relevant, they may be <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/06/03/public-cloud-dominates-enterprise-cloud?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed:+readwriteweb+(ReadWriteWeb)&amp;utm_content=Netvibes#awesm=~oGfh6AwqarzcGT">bolted onto services such as AWS</a>, which would become the core of most companies' cloud operations. Self-hosted systems and hardware would be secondary, but still crucial for supporting workloads that need to be run behind the firewall or in accordance with strict requirements.</p>
<p>Such arrangements, if they became the norm, would erode most of the distinctions between private and public cloud. In an article for SYS-CON, F5's Lori MacVittie looked forward to a "seamless" hybrid cloud future, arguing that the separation between data centers and cloud providers' infrastructure could be addressed through automation and rigorous criteria for moving workloads between environments. The public and private silos could disappear as APIs and scripts evolve into a "data center fabric" running through all resources.</p>
<p>"Corporate borders are expanding," MacVittie wrote. "They must necessarily include all manner of cloud environments and <a href="http://www.sys-con.com/node/3098304">they cannot continue to be disconnected operational islands</a>."</p>
<h2>Why Private and Hybrid Cloud are Still Important</h2>
<p>Why might hybrid cloud, rather than pure public cloud, become the default configuration for organizations down the road? BitTorrent's Erik Pounds, writing for GigaOM, highlighted some of the public cloud limitations and drawbacks that could motivate individuals and businesses to keep storing data locally.</p>
<p>Pounds argued that the centralization of public cloud services, as well as the fundamental inefficiency of relaying information through someone else's infrastructure rather than from one device to another, should be cause for pause when considering an all-out move into the cloud. He cited Apple's FaceTime as an example of device-to-device software that ran better because it didn't rely too much on the cloud, and proposed a similar tack for other products and services.</p>
<p>"One way to do this is to offer <a href="https://gigaom.com/2014/05/31/if-left-unchecked-cloud-fever-could-make-us-sick/">private and more efficient alternatives</a>," wrote Pounds. "Cloud-based services undoubtedly bring a level of convenience, but if you want your files to remain private, move faster between devices and not be limited by capacity, a device-to-device solution is a better option. This would also satisfy IT managers who need to efficiently move files between two servers and do not want to have high software expenses, deal with VPNs or buy expensive WAN acceleration boxes."</p>
<p>Private clouds offer many of the benefits of cloud computing without the usual issues of data control and security. Even if on-premises infrastructure turns into essentially a giant accessory for a platform like AWS, it will still be important to have it in place when workloads need it.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 05 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000cdyess3096 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/04/public-cloudprivate-cloud-distinction-going-away#commentsHow the Private Cloud Increases Agilityhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/04/how-private-cloud-increases-agility
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>With virtually limitless cloud resources now available at the click of a button (and the swipe of a credit card), companies have more opportunity than ever to build and scale operations to keep pace with customer demand. However, this new paradigm also naturally creates additional pressures to innovate and ensure that teams are getting the most value out of all infrastructure.</p>
<p>"Most companies want the control that comes with an internal IT infrastructure, but with the speed of service they can demand from outside contractors," explained <a href="http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/private-cloud/4142/how-to-turn-your-datacentre-into-a-private-cloud">Nick Booth for CloudPro</a>. "How can this be achieved, without imposing fines on the IT department when a project comes in late?</p>
<p>Enter the modern private cloud. In the past, private cloud has been muddied by companies who'd cloudwash their products to hitch a ride on the latest buzzword or was deemed too expensive or ungainly to either compete with or complement public cloud, but that is no longer an accurate picture of things. Today, hardware, automation and API compatibility have evolved to the point that organizations can make internal IT work much like an external cloud platform.</p>
<h2>The Private Cloud Promotes Agility in Dev/Test, As Well As Speedy Time to Market</h2>
<p>Private cloud is most often touted as the ideal deployment model for companies that require close management of sensitive data, such that they cannot risk entrusting it to a public cloud service provider. But control is only one of many benefits conferred by private cloud. It opens up new possibilities for getting more out existing investments and also accelerating deployment.</p>
<p>Considering this widespread imperative to control data, security has unsurprisingly been a longstanding obstacle to public cloud adoption, although it may be finally receding into the background as companies become more comfortable with outside services. Now organizations are seeking fresh ways to mix and match private and public cloud infrastructure in order to streamline costs and promote agility in processes such as development and testing. The modern private cloud offers the performance and flexibility (for example, API compatibility with public cloud providers' infrastructure) needed to achieve these goals.</p>
<p>In his article, Booth noted the advice of Nutanix executive Greg Smith, who advised would-be private cloud adopters to emulate the practices of hyperscale operators renowned for their IT efficiency. Doing so would entail modular designs for compute, storage and networking components, as well as the adept usage of open source tools. The result would be a high-performing, reliable data center that exhibited the best features of private and public cloud computing.</p>
<p>While Smith suggested that many IT departments seeking to cloudify their infrastructure may find it difficult to manage and configure open source software, today's leading private cloud solutions are open source, including CloudStack, Eucalyptus, OpenNebula and OpenStack. These products and services are outgrowing their roots as do-it-yourself combinations of various functionalities that may or may not be suitable for the project at hand.</p>
<h2>Agility and Other Benefits of Today's Private Clouds</h2>
<p>Companies can now purchase user-friendly commercial offerings powered by open source software, benefiting from easy setup as well as ongoing community development of core features. How do these solutions improve agility? They simplify processes, plus they give teams what is needed to produce high-quality software quickly:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Better responsiveness to changing requirements</strong>: Today's applications can take off overnight, leading to spikes in user demand. The best private clouds have the performance and workload portability for optimally handling these scenarios.</li>
<li><strong>More efficient application lifecycles</strong>: Developers and testers get resources on time and are able to iterate rapidly, discovering and addressing defects and adding new features.</li>
<li><strong>Faster time to market</strong>: Self-service IT and fewer long-term cost considerations (the private cloud converts OPEX to CAPEX).</li>
</ul>
<p>Ultimately, a modern private cloud enables organizations to improve their business postures. It integrates well with existing systems and even with public cloud services, offering high levels of performance, security and economy.</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 04 Jun 2014 21:22:04 +0000cdyess3044 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/04/how-private-cloud-increases-agility#commentsCloud News Recap: June 3, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/03/cloud-news-recap-june-3-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Hard to believe it's already June! With half the year in the books, let's kick things off with a little shameless self-promotion. We're proud to announce that Eucalyptus 4.0 has shipped and is now <a href="/download/eucalyptus">generally available</a>! There are many major new features in this major release, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Redesigned Eucalyptus Management Console</strong>: The redesigned console has a new UI that merges the user and administrator consoles. It also still allows you to manage both private Eucalyptus and public Amazon Web Services resources, making it easy to take snapshots, launch instances and manage Auto Scaling groups from one location.</li>
<li><strong>Support for RiakCS</strong>: Seamless object storage integration bridges Eucalyptus and RiakCS Enterprise.</li>
<li><strong>Edge Networking</strong>: Deployment has been made easier now that cloud infrastructure can fit more naturally into the existing network, reducing delays and eliminating bottlenecks.</li>
<li><strong>ELB Improvements</strong>: The Elastic Load Balancer service now supports SSL termination and session stickiness.</li>
</ul>
<p>Check out a more comprehensive run down of the <a href="/eucalyptus-cloud/iaas/features">new and existing features</a>.</p>
<p>Beyond that, we'll take a look at some other news in the hybrid cloud space, such as the continued dominance of AWS among public cloud providers and the evolution of cloud implementation challenges. Finally, there are also some important debates right now about how Hadoop works with existing cloud computing technologies and whether or not OpenStack has a future as an ecosystem.</p>
<h2>Amazon Web Services Stands out in Gartner's Magic Quadrant</h2>
<p>Gartner released its most recent <a href="http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1UKQQA6&amp;ct=140528&amp;st=sb">Cloud IaaS Magic Quadrant</a> last month, and to nobody's surprise, AWS came out way ahead for another year. Although it's worth noting that there's finally some competition on the radar, most notably Microsoft given its hybrid cloud capabilities to bridge on-premises environments with it's Azure cloud. Still, the gap is considerable: AWS was estimated to have five times the combined compute capacity of the other 14 vendors that were assessed as part of the study.</p>
<p>AWS has significant advantages in areas such as its partner ecosystem, plugins, SaaS offerings and optimization services. Its growth and responsiveness to customer feedback have also set it apart from its competitors, according to Gartner's report.</p>
<p>"AWS has a diverse customer base and the broadest range of use cases, including enterprise and mission-critical applications," stated the Gartner contributors. "It is a thought leader; it is extraordinarily innovative, exceptionally agile, and very responsive to the market. It has the richest array of IaaS features and PaaS-like capabilities, and continues to rapidly expand its service offerings. It is the provider most commonly chosen for strategic adoption."</p>
<h2>What is Required for a Successful Hybrid Cloud Deployment?</h2>
<p>Hybrid cloud is a key area for many organizations that seek to extend cloud computing abilities beyond their own data centers, meshing them with public cloud ecosystems. Gartner's Milind Govekar wrote a blog post outlining the <a href="http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2745417">key benefits of hybrid cloud computing</a>, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Isolation of workloads that involve sensitive data or predetermined performance levels</li>
<li>Improvements to resiliency and availability</li>
<li>Cost-efficiency through being able to run workloads in optimal environments</li>
</ul>
<p>By definition, building a hybrid cloud entails setting up a private cloud. Doing so hasn't always been straightforward, though, as Govekar noted.</p>
<p>"Organizations cannot, however, adopt hybrid cloud services without first implementing a private cloud," he wrote. "We continue to see organizations struggle to implement private clouds and to demonstrate their value because this requires a shift in how IT is delivered, one that involves changes to people, processes and business management."</p>
<p>He also commented on the disconnect between lines of business and IT on cloud procurement. Cloud management platforms are put forward as a solution for handling hybrid cloud deployments and overcoming key implementation challenges.</p>
<h2>The Cloud's Impact on In-house Data Centers</h2>
<p>Speaking of private clouds and on-premises IT assets, the emergence of mainstream cloud computing has enabled many organizations to forgo infrastructure management and instead rely on a third-party provider. This new state of affairs <a href="http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Future-of-in-house-datacentres-in-the-cloud-era">doesn't mean the end of in-house data centers</a>, however.</p>
<p>ComputerWeekly's Archana Venkatraman examined the rapid growth of cloud services (the market is estimated to top $79 billion worldwide by 2018) and the growing business desire to invest less in data centers and more in third-party offerings. All the same, there's still a strong market for dedicated facilities, given the ongoing prevalence of legacy applications that cannot be efficiently ported to the cloud, as well as customers and workloads that demand strong, easily controlled performance.</p>
<p>"If I start a new business today, will I build my data center? Maybe not. But that doesn't mean in-house data centers are dead," Daniel Beazer, consultant at BroadGroup told ComputerWeekly. "I know of a bank that just bought a mainframe, and late last year Debenhams invested in a mainframe. This proves that these businesses are not about to exit [the] data center business."</p>
<p>While some companies are squarely focused on getting rid of all in-house IT, the likely way forward for many of them is hybrid IT. Personnel will need to determine whether a workload is best run on-site, in a colo facility or via public cloud.</p>
<h2>The Economic Viability of OpenStack Public Clouds</h2>
<p>Writing for The Virtualization Practice, Bernd Harzog and Mike Norman <a href="http://www.virtualizationpractice.com/openstack-dead-26869/">compared OpenStack public clouds with offerings from AWS, Microsoft, Google and VMware</a>. The two conclude that OpenStack is a "dead cloud walking" due to a lack of motivation among vendors to make it better, a trend punctuated by Rackspace's recent troubles.</p>
<p>Their analysis is worth digging into, as they examine the issue of workload compatibility (most virtualized servers do not run on KVM) and how OpenStack may simply have been too late to the party. They also make an interesting argument about open source's role in the evolution of both OpenStack and AWS.</p>
<p>"Amazon is gaining the benefit of the open-source communities that drive its constituent components whilst steadfastly avoiding putting either its own codebase or even its own APIs into such communities," they wrote.</p>
<h2>Do Hadoop and the Cloud Get Along?</h2>
<p>Hadoop has been a hot trend in IT recently, which is hardly surprising given the platform's centrality in handling big data. Growing interest in Hadoop has also kicked off debates about whether it is best run on-premises or in the cloud.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.techrepublic.com/article/hadoop-and-cloud-computing-collision-course-or-happy-symbiosis/">Matt Asay broke down the relationship between Hadoop and the cloud</a> for TechRepublic. Traditionally, the argument has been that Hadoop excels in the data center due to the size and particular requirements of its workloads, but the logic may be changing now that so much data is housed not just in-house but also in S3 and other clouds</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 03 Jun 2014 16:22:31 +0000cdyess3037 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/06/03/cloud-news-recap-june-3-2014#commentsCloud News Recap: May 28, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/28/cloud-news-recap-may-28-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>This week's Eucalyptus and cloud news roundup is heavy on DevOps, currently one of the foremost topics in enterprise IT and software development and testing. By bringing developers and operations teams closer together, DevOps theoretically streamlines the entire lifecycles of applications, making it relatively straightforward to coordinate everyday programming practices and resource requests.</p>
<p>"DevOps is the continuation of [the agile/continuous delivery] journey, beginning from product management, development and QA and all the way into IT operations, where value is delivered to customers," explained <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/05/22/enterprise-devops-adoption-isnt-mandatory-but-neither-is-survival/">Tripwire founder and DevOps Enterprise Summit host Gene Kim</a> in The Wall Street Journal. "DevOps practices enable fast flow of features from development into IT operations, while preserving world-class availability, reliability and security."</p>
<p>Many organizations are now in the position of having to decide whether to take up DevOps and, if intent on making it part of their operations, what technical solutions and procedural changes are needed to make it work. We'll look below at some of the current discourse about DevOps, but we'll also dig into some other issues such as the rough times ahead for IT vendors (especially hardware manufacturers), the simple path toward the hybrid cloud and whether it is more cost-effective to rent or buy infrastructure.</p>
<h2>Organizations That Don't Adopt DevOps Risk Being Left Behind</h2>
<p>In his op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Kim positioned DevOps as the natural culmination of many IT trends that have influenced dev/test over the last decade. He goes further to argue that, contrary to prevailing wisdom, DevOps uptake among enterprises is not only likely but already underway.</p>
<p>DevOps has a reputation for being mostly the province of startups or small businesses, but, Kim argued, it actually has relevance for companies of all sizes and in a variety of verticals. He compared the impact of DevOps on IT to that of Lean procedures on automobile manufacturing in the 1980s, that is, it
enables firms to do more with fewer resources. Kim cited the DevOps Survey of Practice to reinforce his claim that DevOps is improving organizational and business performance.</p>
<h2>DevOps' Benefits for Large Enterprises</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/how-devops-benefits-large-enterprises/a/d-id/1268924">In an InformationWeek article</a>, Andi Mann took a stance similar to Kim's, responding to a recent post by Work-Bench venture associate Rachel Shannon-Solomon in which she argued that DevOps wouldn't work for large enterprises (only for startups). Mann pointed out that some large, established companies have already had success with DevOps, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>CA Technologies</li>
<li>DirecTV</li>
<li>Union Bank</li>
</ul>
<p>Moreover, enterprises with more than $500 million in annual revenues may be adopting DevOps at a faster pace than their smaller counterparts. Mann cited an IDG study finding that 90 percent of large organizations adopting DevOps reported substantial benefits. For these companies, DevOps may provide a way to structure incremental change and foster better communication.</p>
<h2>Does DevOps in a Box Actually Exist?</h2>
<p>After deciding that DevOps may be a good fit for its operations, a business has to formulate plans for actually implementing it, which can be complicated because DevOps is technically a methodology rather than a specific set of hardware and software tools. <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/85452">Devops.com editor and Camp DevOps host Alan Shimel</a>, writing for Network World, looked at the widespread and perhaps misguided desire for a silver bullet solution, or "DevOps in a box," to get organizations up to speed with today's IT practices.</p>
<p>"[T]he idea of being able to buy some boxed up DevOps is just a joke to those who actually practice and are involved in the DevOps market," wrote Shimel. "Of course, I expect there will be no shortage of snake salesmen who will try to sell some such concoction."</p>
<p>While Shimel disputed the notion that DevOps could be packaged into one material solution, he picked up on one of the most important questions in IT today: What, exactly, is DevOps? Shimel drew upon arguments made by JumpCloud's Rajat Bhargava, framing DevOps as something predicated on company culture and philosophy rather than specific tools. There are no shortcuts because organizations have to take the time to understand their audiences and improve their offerings accordingly.</p>
<h2>Why Hybrid Cloud is Making Inroads into Many Markets</h2>
<p>On the main Eucalyptus site, I recently added a post about <a href="/blog/2014/05/22/simplifying-path-toward-hybrid-cloud">hybrid cloud</a> and the path toward setting one up. While organizations as a whole are interested in striking a balance between the best features of private and public cloud computing environments, it hasn't always been straightforward for them to achieve this goal.</p>
<p>The emergence of solutions such as Eucalyptus has made hybrid cloud setup much faster and easier than in the past. Just look at <a href="http://ow.ly/i/5FnPA">how quickly Eucalyptus can be installed</a>! My article also examined the growing centrality of hybrid cloud in business and IT, with half of large enterprises expected to adopt one by 2017.</p>
<h2>Rise of Cloud Computing Fuels Grim Outlook for Hardware Makers and Other IT Vendors</h2>
<p>Cisco Live in San Francisco dominated the news this past week, with Cisco CEO John Chambers making headlines for his predictions of "brutal, brutal consolidation" within IT as the cloud swallows up functionality once performed exclusively by on-premises software and hardware. <a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/05/22/legacy-it-makers-ibm-emc-et-al-deal-with-um-interesting-times/">GigaOM's Barb Darrow provided some extra context for Chambers' remarks</a>, looking at the persistence of white box manufacturers even as traditional IT giants struggle to grow revenue or enter new markets.</p>
<p>Darrow examined IBM's recent struggles in particular, with the company having been forced to sell off its x86 server division and losing a Central Intelligence Agency contract to Amazon Web Services. These setbacks are just the tip of the iceberg - other vendors are struggling to keep pace with cloud service providers that are driving the hardware market and commoditizing infrastructure along the way.</p>
<p>"At this point, when you look at legacy vendors - especially those rooted in hardware - it's hard to see any upside," wrote Darrow. "Server vendors face consolidating buying power among Web-scale providers - Amazon, Facebook, Google and and Microsoft - as well as big SaaS providers like Salesforce.com. These companies can dictate how their hardware is built, by whom and at what price."</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 28 May 2014 16:12:54 +0000cdyess3031 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/28/cloud-news-recap-may-28-2014#commentsSimplifying the Path Toward Hybrid Cloudhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/22/simplifying-path-toward-hybrid-cloud
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Open source cloud platforms are coming to the fore as organizations look for ways to extend their on-premises virtualized environments and access self-service and elastic options for compute, storage and networking resources. Many enterprises are looking for a balance between private and public deployments that weaves together the best features for control, performance and scalability.</p>
<p>Still, the path toward efficient, economical private and hybrid cloud computing architectures hasn't been easy for everyone. Some organizations have struggled with cloudwashed products that only extend virtualization or wrangled with do-it-yourself private cloud implementations, finding themselves ultimately squeezed between their wariness of public cloud unknowns and the perceived paucity of features in private cloud ecosystems. While they may secretly want to move some or many of their workloads to the public cloud, concerns about data handling and performance may be holding them back.</p>
<p>But companies need not go through such an ordeal, as the path toward hybrid cloud has become much simpler and easier to adopt.</p>
<h2>Why Hybrid Cloud is Taking Off</h2>
<p>As its name lets on, hybrid cloud is about balance and choice. Earlier this month, Forbes contributor Mike Kavis chronicled <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikekavis/2014/05/13/for-aws-objects-in-the-rear-view-mirror-are-closer-than-they-appear/">how hybrid cloud is becoming a defining force within IT</a>, focusing on how it can fill a key gap between the technical challenges and limitations of on-premises IT environments and the perceived security gaps and commoditized performance of public cloud.</p>
<p>"Two to three years ago, most enterprises were wary of the public cloud due to concerns in the areas of security, privacy, and compliance," Kavis observed. "Private clouds were the preferred solution for enterprises. What many of these enterprises discovered was that building private clouds was hard and expensive and achieving all of the benefits that the public cloud offers was not attainable."</p>
<p>That was basically the case a few years ago, but times have changed. Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos, responding to a <a href="http://cloudborat.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/do-not-do-private-cloud-do-public-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-107">March blog post on Cloud Opinions</a>, wrote that while controlling a company's IT destiny has historically been challenging, the evolution of the cloud paradigm has significantly altered the landscape.</p>
<p>"There is a common perception that controlling your IT destiny is complicated and expensive. It certainly has been so," Mickos wrote. "But today with highly evolved hardware and highly automated cloud platforms, operation of your own infrastructure is becoming easier and less expensive by the day. As design patterns flow from the world of public clouds to the world of private clouds, those private clouds become much easier to manage than traditional datacenters."</p>
<p>Mickos also noted, like Kavis, that Amazon was innovating at an astonishing pace, but that there was still plenty of space for private and hybrid cloud arrangements that meet specific organizational requirements. It really depends on what the company needs and what resources it is willing to devote to its problems.</p>
<p>For example, while using a public cloud ensures access to dedicated site reliability engineers, it could be much less expensive and require fewer personnel to maintain uptime in a private cloud setting. Finding the right combination for each workflow and type of infrastructure has led to hybrid cloud proliferation, with Gartner projecting that half of large enterprises will have one in place by 2017.</p>
<p>"Hybrid cloud is central to the conversation about cloud computing," Canonical founder <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/05/20/mark-shuttleworth-sees-strong-demand-for-hybrid-cloud/">Mark Shuttleworth told The Wall Street Journal</a>. "Some large organizations are native to the cloud or moved all of their computing to the cloud, but they are rare. Most companies are committed to public and private clouds, and getting data to the right cloud. Hybrid cloud is without a doubt central to the conversation and thought about the cloud as far as we can tell."</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 22 May 2014 15:33:42 +0000cdyess3018 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/22/simplifying-path-toward-hybrid-cloud#commentsCloud News Recap: May 20, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/20/cloud-news-recap-may-20-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>There were some big developments in the cloud computing world this week, highlighted by revelations that Rackspace, one of the most prominent infrastructure-as-a-service vendors and the co-creator of OpenStack, may be considering "strategic options."</p>
<p>For sure, competition across all parts of the cloud stack has heated up in recent years as Amazon Web Services continues to refine its industry-leading offerings and would-be challengers such as Google and Microsoft seek new ways to entice buyers.</p>
<p>In this week's Eucalyptus and cloud news roundup, we'll look at what's going on with Rackspace, as well as the ongoing struggles of most enterprises to fit OpenStack to their particular requirements. We'll also touch upon the growing interest of vendors in private cloud, which is increasingly seen as a complement, rather than alternative, to public cloud. Eucalyptus is well suited to this paradigm since it provides the benefits of cloud computing by bridging private environments and AWS.</p>
<h2>Rackspace Considers Exit Options, Hinting at Possible Industry Consolidation</h2>
<p>San Antonio-based Rackspace may be on the verge of <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2014/05/15/is-this-the-beginning-of-cloud-consolidation-rackspace-looks-at-exit-options/">exiting the cloud provider market</a>, or at least scaling back its presence. Forbes contributor Ben Kepes took a look at how Rackspace has historically struggled to keep pace with the massive levels of capital investment of its larger, more diversified rivals.</p>
<p>Rackspace has shifted from focusing on telecommunications providers to emphasizing its customer support to focusing on private cloud, but now, other companies may be looking at Rackspace as an acquisition that can shore up their own cloud operations. Kepes mentions HP and AT&amp;T as possible partners or buyers of Rackspace.</p>
<p>"On the one hand this news is sad - Rackspace has been an important player in the industry," he wrote. "But it also indicates that we're seeing a real rationalization start to take shape. The removal of a few bit players and the consolidation of some others will leave us with less diversity, but also more clarity for customers when it comes to decision making time."</p>
<h2>Cloud Service Providers Try to Differentiate Their Offerings</h2>
<p>It's not just Rackspace. Cloud providers are having to change how they do business as customer demand continues to surge and more players enter the market. IDC recently estimated that cloud-related IT spending would rise to $100 billion in 2014, up 25 percent year-over-over.</p>
<p>The Washington Post's Mohana Ravindranath chronicled some of the most significant <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-it/as-cloud-competition-heats-up-providers-seek-to-differentiate-themselves/2014/05/17/9d62c7e0-dd08-11e3-bda1-9b46b2066796_story.html">changes in the current cloud landscape</a>, including the ongoing price war between Google and AWS. Vendors have been seeking to offer lower cost solutions that are nevertheless high quality and indispensable for large user populations.</p>
<p>"[I]t becomes the race to scale - how many customers can you sign up, and how much are your hardware [costs] going down, that can allow you to scale out," Morningstar analyst Peter Wahlstrom told The Washington Post. "And the idea is initially, you're basically in land-grab mode."
Ravindranath also analyzes HP's attempt to get in on the cloud game by providing services and rebranding its products under the Helion name. Helion includes products based on OpenStack, and HP itself is a committed reseller of OpenStack offerings.</p>
<h2>OpenStack Has Many Contributors and Users On Board, So Why Is Uptake So Slow?</h2>
<p>Speaking of OpenStack, it has attracted a lot of contributors and users, but has gained very little commercial traction overall so far. Writing for <a href="http://www.information-age.com/technology/cloud-and-virtualisation/123458011/great-openstack-conundrum-15000-members-why-adoption-lagging">Information Age</a>, Ben Rossi tried to figure out why.</p>
<p>Essentially, Rossi found, enterprises seem to be struggling with the do-it-yourself nature of OpenStack, which can translate into delays and significant technical hurdles. Commercial solutions based on OpenStack are still few and far between, plus support is limited, meaning that users have to do a lot of the heavy lifting to get an OpenStack cloud up and running.</p>
<p>While some companies believe that their struggles with OpenStack are due to flaws within the open source model, other open source solutions such as Eucalyptus have succeeded by offering robust functionality and support out of the box. Setting up an economical, high-performing private cloud need not be difficult, but it may take time - as well as the integration of OpenStack into more products - for some organizations to figure this out.</p>
<h2>Enterprise requirements give shape to new AWS hybrid cloud solutions</h2>
<p>In the past, the private cloud has been construed as something that either didn't technically exist or at least failed to match the essential advantages (such as on-demand self service and rapid elasticity, to name but a few) of public cloud computing. Discussions of private versus public have made it seem like buyers must choose one or the other, when in fact they can have it both ways by using Eucalyptus.</p>
<p>TechTarget's Beth Pariseau and Adam Hughes examined the evolution of an <a href="http://searchaws.techtarget.com/feature/Enterprise-market-shapes-AWS-hybrid-cloud-strategy">AWS hybrid cloud</a> as Amazon has recalibrated its approach to private cloud. Whereas organizations were once advised to rebuild all of their applications for the public cloud, now they have more options for bringing AWS further into the data center.</p>
<p>Amazon itself provides limited services for bridging the gap between its infrastructure and users' on-premises data centers, but to get fuller functionality, a platform such as Eucalyptus is needed. Pariseau and Hughes mention Eucalyptus and its AWS API compatibility, which enables the seamless migration of workloads between private and public cloud computing environments.</p>
<p>The rest of the article looks at how many large technology vendors, from VMware to IBM to HP, are looking for a piece of the private cloud pie. It has become increasingly apparent that enterprises have large amounts of data and applications that are best run on-premises, meaning that many of them will seek to strike a balance between private and public cloud.</p>
<h2>Renewed concerns about cloudwashing</h2>
<p>Cloudwashing, the practice of rebranding legacy solutions as true cloud services, was a major problem several years ago when "the cloud" first became mainstream terminology.</p>
<p>ZDNet's Larry Dignan recently analyzed how <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/enterprise-giants-and-cloud-computing-whats-cloudwashing-vs-real-dna-change-7000029453/">cloudwashing has evolved</a>, noting that many "cloud" offerings now come with bundled hardware and services. He also looked at how vendors have turned many open source technologies into proprietary stacks, floating the idea that IBM's cloud products could be construed as "IBM-as-a-service."</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 20 May 2014 18:16:24 +0000cdyess2984 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/20/cloud-news-recap-may-20-2014#commentsAWS Hybrid Clouds Rise as Cloud Service Provider Market Matureshttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/16/aws-hybrid-clouds-rise-cloud-service-provider-market-matures
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Is the cloud provider market finally maturing? While technical services continue to evolve to power increasingly complex applications, on the vendor side things may be heading toward consolidation. With so many organizations now standardizing on Amazon Web Services, even major players such as Rackspace may be looking for an exit strategy. Renewed efforts by Microsoft, Google and other large organizations may also be pushing smaller players out of the game.</p>
<h2>Rackspace May be Looking into Strategic Options</h2>
<p>Forbes' Ben Kepes characterized Rackspace as being caught in a bind as it tries to compete with providers that can make massive capital investments. Previously, the San Antonio-based company co-founded the OpenStack project, which has produced some components that have and will continue to be integrated into others, but it has not taken off as the backbone of a commercial solution yet.</p>
<p>For example, Eucalyptus 4.0 features support for parts of the OpenStack ecosystem such as Ceph and RiakCS. In an <a href="https://yabbly.com/ama/wnb3omjx/i-was-ceo-of-mysql-am-ceo-of-eucalyptus?sid=jjq5rh9g">ask me anything</a> hosted by Yabbly, Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos stated that Red Hat may be in position to provide a full OpenStack distribution for data centers, especially in the wake of its acquisition of Ceph maker Inktank. OpenStack was created by Rackspace and NASA in 2010.</p>
<p>Kepes hypothesized that HP and AT&amp;T could both be interested in Rackspace as it explores options with its bankers. The impact of an acquisition could be mixed, since it may change the direction of some open source projects and either restrict choice or make decisions much clearer, depending on one's perspective.</p>
<p>"On the one hand this news is sad – Rackspace has been an important player in the industry," wrote Kepes. "But it also indicates that <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2014/05/15/is-this-the-beginning-of-cloud-consolidation-rackspace-looks-at-exit-options/">we're seeing a real rationalization start to take shape</a>. The removal of a few bit players and the consolidation of some others will leave us with less diversity, but also more clarity for customers when it comes to decision making time."</p>
<h2>AWS Hybrid Clouds Are Now Front and Center for Enterprises</h2>
<p>One of the areas in which Rackspace has tried to compete is private cloud, a sector that is quickly gathering momentum. Many companies no longer regard private infrastructure as a strict alternative to public cloud, but rather as something that can complement and augment a platform such as AWS.</p>
<p>Solutions such as Eucalyptus have enabled organizations to build flexible, scalable custom environments, in which on-premises systems are optimized for speed, security and cost and enhanced by AWS API compatibility. TechTarget's Beth Pariseau and Adam Hughes looked at the increasing trend of configuring different services in this way, setting up a blend of public and private resources. The public/private cloud dichotomy is gradually disappearing.</p>
<p>"<a href="http://searchaws.techtarget.com/feature/Enterprise-market-shapes-AWS-hybrid-cloud-strategy">None of the work we do is Amazon-only or private-cloud-only</a>," said David Linthicum, senior vice president at Boston-based Cloud Technology Partners, according to TechTarget. "Deployments are usually very complex and very heterogeneous."</p>
<p>Naturally, vendors of all sizes have tried to carve out at least a niche in the maturing private cloud market. Amazon itself provides a number of tools for extending AWS into the data center. Enterprises can, for instance, integrate Active Directory with the AWS Identity and Access Management system.</p>
<p>Still, some companies need additional functionality and deeper integration in their hybrid cloud computing architectures. Eucalyptus works with common AWS APIs, enabling seamless migration of workloads between environments to save money and optimize performance. At the same time, users benefit from having granular control of data by handling it in their own systems.</p>
<p>Ultimately, a solution such as Eucalyptus ensures better utilization of hardware and a mix of private and cloud elements that is ideal for the user. ZDNet's Larry Dignan, examining the ongoing difficulties with spotting cloudwashing, noted that the hybrid cloud was becoming the standard for enterprises and that they must scrutinize products before making a procurement decisions.</p>
<p>"The reality is that <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/enterprise-giants-and-cloud-computing-whats-cloudwashing-vs-real-dna-change-7000029453/">most enterprises will use a hybrid cloud model</a>," wrote Dignan. "They're not going to toss existing assets - that are depreciating and look good on the tax statement---to take their infrastructure to the cloud. Meanwhile, the pay-as-you-go model isn't perfect and can actually cost you more in certain situations. The headaches with on-premise software and hardware are also well known. But the best course between your data center and the public cloud lies somewhere in the middle."</p>
</div></div></div>Sat, 17 May 2014 01:00:00 +0000cdyess3099 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/16/aws-hybrid-clouds-rise-cloud-service-provider-market-matures#commentsCloud News Recap: May 13, 2014https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/13/cloud-news-recap-may-13-2014
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The past week was a big one for Eucalyptus and, by extension, scalable private and hybrid cloud computing environments. We announced the upcoming release of Eucalyptus 4.0, with a variety of new features that address the common pain points our customers have seen as their deployments grow and change to meet new requirements. Eucalyptus has long been a vital tool for dev/test teams, but recently it has become an increasingly important tool for managing initiatives such as data analytics projects, too.</p>
<p>Eucalyptus 4.0 builds upon the AWS API compatibility that has long made it the ideal choice for organizations that need to leverage both the control of private cloud and the scalability of public cloud. On top of that, it offers key updates to the user console, load balancing and scale-out storage, to name just a few features. To kick off this week, we'll take a look at the reception of Eucalyptus 4.0, as well as some of the industry-wide trends in enterprise cloud and open source software development.</p>
<h2>Eucalyptus 4.0 Responds to Customer Feedback with Many Private Cloud Enhancements</h2>
<p>We included many new features for security, scalability and AWS API compatibility in Eucalyptus 4.0. Data Center Knowledge's Jason Verge had a <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/05/08/eucalyptus-4-0-addresses-enterprise-private-cloud-pain-points/">great rundown of some of the most notable changes</a>, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Scale-out storage support for open source and commercial solutions that implement the S3 interface</li>
<li>Easier deployment of Eucalyptus atop existing network topologies</li>
<li>The ability to change cloud configurations without reinstalling</li>
<li>Support for security groups, allowing consistent application of resource policies across environments</li>
<li>Load balancing across multiple machines for higher availability</li>
<li>Enhancements to the user console for desktop and mobile devices</li>
</ul>
<p>These changes and many others make Eucalyptus an increasingly versatile solution, capable of handling workflows that require high scalability and performance.</p>
<p>"[W]e're seeing more data analytics: they have a massive data set and want to run jobs on Eucalyptus," stated Eucalyptus vice president Tim Zeller. "We've had some early adopters here but we're seeing more people coming to the forefront. There's existing customers that have started small to medium in size, but the growth that they're seeing internally for the service has grown immensely."</p>
<p>Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos went in depth about the <a href="/blog/2014/05/07/euca-4-ops">changes and the philosophy behind them</a> in a blog post. He talked in particular about the introduction of the Object Storage Gateway and Edge Networking.</p>
<h2>What Do Enterprises Expect From Cloud Computing Solutions?</h2>
<p>IT spending is shifting rapidly to cloud computing solutions. Gartner estimated that the cloud will account for the majority of new IT procurements by 2016.</p>
<p>Not only that, but hybrid cloud is becoming the center of many IT departments' plans for the future. Many organizations already have something like a hybrid cloud in place as they seek to access resources more quickly while also retaining key data on-premises. Going forward, stakeholders may seek to streamline management of their hybrid environments to increase control and visibility.</p>
<p>Writing for TheNextWeb, Virtustream senior vice president Sean Jennings looked at what <a href="http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/05/10/climbing-enterprise-cloud-market-ladder/">cloud service providers need to know when selling to enterprises</a>, including the importance of performance and hybrid cloud services. Jennings also examined some of the considerations to make when acquiring another company (or being acquired), arguing that acquisitions should be targeted toward serving a specific customer base rather than trying to cater to everyone.</p>
<h2>Implementing Continuous Integration Through Open Source Software</h2>
<p>A little while ago, Promet Source's Jay Uhlinger assessed the value of <a href="http://www.prometsource.com/blog/implementing-continuous-integration-worth-it">implementing continuous integration</a> for Web CMS projects. This past week, I looked at Uhlinger's post and added some thoughts on <a href="/blog/2014/05/07/implementing-continuous-integration-open-source-software">open source software's role in enabling effective CI</a>. Eucalyptus's strong community and rapidly growing set of capabilities makes it an excellent fit for teams that are setting up CI to streamline testing and deployment.</p>
<h2>New "Controlling Cloud Costs" White Paper from Eucalyptus</h2>
<p>Reducing costs while simultaneously improving IT efficiency is one of the core reasons for shifting more resources and infrastructure to the cloud. However, many organizations may be falling short of their savings goals, either because they are overly reliant on public cloud or they are spending too much time wrangling with traditional private cloud.</p>
<p>Our new "<a href="/resources/whitepapers/controlling-cloud-costs">Controlling Cloud Costs</a>" white paper examines in depth why cost is a common stumbling block for organizations trying to get the benefits of cloud computing. It looks at how Eucalyptus enables companies to get the best of both worlds in the cloud by tapping into AWS via deep API compatibility and maintaining granular control over internal systems.</p>
<h2>Linkgard Uses Eucalyptus to Streamline Testing</h2>
<p>Eucalyptus customers have for years used our products to enhance their dev/test environments and achieve substantial savings and competitive advantages. We've done a number of case studies on how Eucalyptus has benefited our users, including Linkgard.</p>
<p>This week we published a blog post that provides a quick overview of how <a href="/blog/2014/05/09/linkgard-uses-eucalyptus-improve-development-and-testing">Linkgard streamlined its operations via Eucalyptus</a>. Take a look if you're interested in how Eucalyptus works but haven't had time to dig into the longer case studies.</p>
<h2>How has Heartbleed Changed the Economics of Open Source Software Development?</h2>
<p>Open source software provides numerous advantages over proprietary equivalents, including better economics, higher quality and superior security as a result of community oversight. However, the recent discovery of the Heartbleed flaw in the widely used OpenSSL cryptographic library seems to have cast doubt on the safety of open source projects.</p>
<p>Dr. Dobb's editor-in-chief Andrew Binstock reframed the issue as a monetary, rather than technical, matter. Essentially, open source initiatives such as OpenSSL are caught in a bind between inviting community engagement and deriving sustainable revenue, and licenses are at the center of their struggle.</p>
<p>"My concern is that if this view becomes widespread and copyleft licenses are heavily disfavored, the <a href="http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/the-conflict-at-the-heart-of-open-source/240168123">fundamental nature of open source will change</a>. Small teams of innovators, à la OpenSSL, will no longer be able to create value and be sustained by skill and innovation. And so, one of the most important feeder streams to the open-source ecosystem will disappear - a victim of corporate users' unreasonable refusal to help pay to support projects from which they derive substantial revenue."</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 13 May 2014 15:49:23 +0000cdyess2969 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/13/cloud-news-recap-may-13-2014#commentsEucalyptus 4.0 Enables More Scalable Private Cloudshttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/13/eucalyptus-40-enables-more-scalable-private-clouds
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>We recently announced the upcoming release of <a href="/news/eucalyptus-systems-introduces-release-40-enabling-seamless-growth-large-scale-private-and">Eucalyptus 4.0</a>. This update contains a number of key enhancements that make it increasingly intuitive for DevOps teams and IT administrators to set up and deploy private cloud environments that are deeply compatible with Amazon Web Services APIs such as EC2, S3, EBS, IAM and more.</p>
<p>AWS continues to be the clear leader in public cloud, with revenue from <a href="https://gigaom.com/2014/04/24/amazon-web-services-sales-up-again/">Amazon's "Other" segment</a> - which includes AWS - up 60 percent year-over-year, to $1.2 billion. This means that now more than ever, AWS users are looking for solutions that enable cost-effective and efficient development and testing of applications before shifting them to AWS for production, and Eucalyptus 4.0 provides just that.</p>
<h2>What's Behind the Changes in Eucalyptus 4.0?</h2>
<p>Many Eucalyptus customers rely on our private cloud software to streamline dev/test processes and provide tangible cost savings compared to traditional virtualized infrastructure and/or pure public cloud. Gradually, though, there's been a shift to more diversified workflows, such as applications that require rapid scaling of storage and other resources, as well as the integration of data analytics.</p>
<p>This change is not surprising given the accelerating interest of organizations in big data. A recent QuinStreet Enterprise survey of 540 IT stakeholders discovered that 77 percent of respondents <a href="http://www.itbusinessedge.com/slideshows/2014-big-data-outlook-opportunities-and-challenges-02.html">consider analytics a priority</a> for their organizations. Teams are eager to apply large data sets to everyday tasks to facilitate faster, better decision-making through platforms such as Eucalyptus.</p>
<p>"[W]e're seeing more data analytics: <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/05/08/eucalyptus-4-0-addresses-enterprise-private-cloud-pain-points/">they have a massive data set and want to run jobs on Eucalyptus</a>," stated Eucalyptus vice president Tim Zeller. "We've had some early adopters here but we're seeing more people coming to the forefront. There's existing customers that have started small to medium in size, but the growth that they're seeing internally for the service has grown immensely."</p>
<h2>A Look At What's New in Eucalyptus 4.0</h2>
<p>To accommodate these evolving business and IT requirements while simultaneously improving overall user experience, Eucalyptus 4.0 comes with plenty of changes, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Support for pluggable gateway services to handle scale-out storage volumes. Both open source and proprietary solutions that implement S3 can now be utilized with Eucalyptus. Users can make large-scale deployments much easier to manage by getting their pick of active-active failover utilities. Supported products include Riak CS with additional support planned for future releases.</li>
<li>Service bottlenecks have been addressed through improvements to load balancing. More specifically, front-end services that receive API calls for IAM, EC2, S3, EBS, CloudWatch, Elastic Load Balancing and Autoscaling can be deployed on multiple servers, spreading the workload out for higher overall availability.</li>
<li>The Eucalyptus user console has been redesigned to provide a nimble and easy to use experience for large cloud deployments. This version introduces a new cloud account administration interface for managing of users, groups, security, quotas and policies. A new graphical policy editor enables administrators to build detailed policies, or quickly apply a standard policy template to users and groups.</li>
<li>Users can see more of the benefits of cloud computing thanks to even deeper AWS API compatibility. Eucalyptus has increased the depth of its support for the rapidly growing AWS ecosystem.</li>
</ul>
<p>These are just a few of the major benefits included in Eucalyptus 4.0. With AWS the go-to public cloud platform, Eucalyptus customers can use Eucalyptus 4.0 to ensure that their cloud deployments can seamlessly migrate workloads and operate efficiently at scale. Learn more about the <a href="/news/eucalyptus-systems-introduces-release-40-enabling-seamless-growth-large-scale-private-and">upcoming 4.0 release</a>.</p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 13 May 2014 13:45:58 +0000cdyess2968 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/13/eucalyptus-40-enables-more-scalable-private-clouds#commentsLinkgard Uses Eucalyptus to Improve Development and Testinghttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/09/linkgard-uses-eucalyptus-improve-development-and-testing
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>In a recently published <a href="/customers/case-studies">case study</a>, we looked at <a href="http://www.linkgard.com/">Linkgard</a>, a company that specializes in custom software development, information security and data migration, and how it benefited from a Eucalyptus private cloud. Like a lot of users of Amazon Web Services, Linkgard was looking to further increase its agility in testing and development and realize additional costs savings, all while continuing to utilize the AWS expertise it had accumulated.</p>
<p>Eucalyptus, with its deep AWS API compatibility, enabled Linkgard to get the best of both cloud worlds (public and private) by running services on their own hardware and being able to move workloads between environments as needed. We'll look at some of the highlights of Linkgard's private cloud implementation in this blog post. For more information, be sure to check out the original <a href="/customers/case-studies">case study</a>.</p>
<h2>Why Linkgard Made the Move to Eucalyptus</h2>
<p>Linkgard has used AWS since 2010 but got onto the path toward Eucalyptus after realizing that it could do more to utilize its existing hardware assets. It was being held back by issues with build server maintenance, plus significant portions of its infrastructure were often dedicated to running single tests, creating bottlenecks during dev/test.</p>
<p>Eucalyptus provided a way to use AWS in tandem with an on-premises environment. More specifically, Linkgard could use automation tools such as Chef and Asgard that support both Eucalyptus and AWS via the same APIs, and it could shift demanding tasks to AWS to remove strain on the private cloud.</p>
<p>The result was a hybrid cloud that leveraged AWS's trademark scalability (Linkgard developers could still use their AWS skills) while affording high levels of control, security and economy.</p>
<p>"The AWS skills definitely come in handy [on Eucalyptus]," remarked one Linkgard team member. "However, we also found that working with Eucalyptus makes us appreciate the AWS API even more and make use of it more often."</p>
<h2>What Linkgard Gained by Taking Up Eucalyptus</h2>
<p>With Eucalyptus, Linkgard greatly enhanced its automated testing processes. In the future, it may even use Eucalyptus to support changes to its code review tools, streamlining the process by which builds are automatically generated in response to submitted changes and then manually reviewed.</p>
<p>Linkgard has reduced the amount of time spent wrangling with infrastructure and can now more efficiently automate and standardize its tests. The AWS-compatible private cloud ensures that <a href="http://www.linkgard.com/">Linkgard</a> can get the most out of its assets during dev/test and scale operations as needed via AWS API compatibility.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 09 May 2014 13:06:46 +0000cdyess2967 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/09/linkgard-uses-eucalyptus-improve-development-and-testing#commentsPrivate Cloud More Economical and Efficient Than Ever Beforehttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/08/private-cloud-more-economical-and-efficient-ever
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The private cloud has received flak from some proponents of public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), who argue that the falling costs of public cloud offerings, along with rapid development of new services and APIs in those ecosystems, has made on-premises IT obsolete. The ongoing pricing wars between IaaS providers would seem to underscore this point, with storage and compute becoming less expensive at a torrid pace. Egnyte chief Vineet Jain even foresees a future of <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/27/why-cloud-storage-will-be-free-sooner-than-you-think/">$0 cloud storage</a> - how could any company resist the appeal of that?</p>
<p>Finding the right cloud setup for business requirements isn't an either/or choice between private and public infrastructure, though. Platforms such as Amazon Web Services are excellent for supporting and scaling a huge variety of workloads, but there are still particular tasks that can be run even more efficiently on private infrastructure.</p>
<p>In other words, on-premises and cloud-hosted environments can now coexist in an arrangement that makes it easier for teams to allot each process the resources and levels of security and control that it merits. A growing number of IaaS vendors are realizing the staying power of the private cloud, while Eucalyptus continues to provide the leading software that makes it more feasible and economical to run a AWS-compatible cloud for tasks such as application development and testing.</p>
<h2>Less Expensive Public Cloud Services Don't Remove Need for Private Cloud</h2>
<p>One of the key selling points of the public cloud is economics, particularly the pay-as-you-go business model and the opportunity to turn steep CAPEX into more manageable OPEX. Plus, with the price of storage such as Amazon S3 continually falling, organizations may have extra incentive to consider running more workloads on public cloud infrastructure.</p>
<p>Still, fixation on the declining pricing of public cloud services obscures how the private cloud is not only integral to meeting particular business requirements, but more economically and operationally feasible than ever before. It's not just private cloud software vendors that are making this case - as <a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/03/28/tectonic-shift-as-public-cloud-giants-acknowledge-the-power-of-private-deployment-options/">GigaOM's Barb Darrow</a> recently reported, public cloud providers are gradually acknowledging the importance of private deployments.</p>
<p>Some of them have supported the use of legacy components for some tasks, although the more interesting development is the focus on building services that interface with on-premises infrastructure through public APIs. Google recently did this with its BigQuery database, but AWS APIs have long been addressable through private cloud appliances powered by Eucalyptus.</p>
<p>Users can choose their own hardware and create an AWS-like environment that provides superior flexibility for moving workloads around, keeping costs under control and fully utilizing existing IT investments. Data can be keep privately in a data center to maintain compliance and reduce expenses compared to public, or deployed unchanged to AWS.</p>
<h2>It's Worth It To Be In Control of Your IT Destiny for Some Workloads</h2>
<p>On the surface, the private cloud - long associated with unacceptable CAPEX and challenging infrastructure management - is becoming easier to operate thanks to open source products and services that permit integration with IaaS. As such, it's becoming a more palatable option for businesses, but the long-term benefits of getting more control over data and operations may be more decisive.</p>
<p>For example, an IDC survey recently found that only 13 percent of enterprise data is stored in the cloud, and that more than half may never be suitable for remote hosting. For companies in similar situations, having granular control over IT and being able to maintain data security and compliance is imperative.
Fortunately, the private cloud is increasingly suited to meeting these requirements while enabling efficient software development and testing. Resources can rapidly provisioned and over the long haul users can save money by owning rather than renting their infrastructure.</p>
<p>"If development and deployment of software is a strategic everyday activity, then in most cases <a href="http://cloudborat.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/do-not-do-private-cloud-do-public-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-107">private clouds make sense</a>," wrote CEO Mårten Mickos in a comment on a Cloud Borat post. "There is a common perception that controlling your IT destiny is complicated and expensive. It certainly has been so. But today with highly evolved hardware and highly automated cloud platforms, operation of your own infrastructure is becoming easier and less expensive by the day."</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 08 May 2014 19:01:13 +0000cdyess2966 at https://www.eucalyptus.comhttps://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/05/08/private-cloud-more-economical-and-efficient-ever#comments